


Down Home They Lie To You, Son

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Homophobic Language, M/M, versatile rickyl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-04-29 16:20:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5134448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl, frustrated and fleeing from his past life, ends up in a hotel in Mississippi, where he's content to sit on his balcony and bemoan his fate. The only problem? He just so happens to share that balcony with a rather hot, if annoying, cop. Such is his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ride a Little West (And Find a Bed)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, guys, for reading this fic! A note before I begin. I am NOT stopping posting [A Spade of Truth](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4898878/chapters/11235016). I'm just doing the totally crazy thing of posting both fics at once! Both fics are complete and this fic sits at a prologue and 14 chapters. 
> 
> SCHEDULE: This fic will be posted on Mondays and Fridays. The entire fic is complete and I am just putting final editing and betaing suggestions into the chapters.
> 
> BETAS: Thanks to my ever present cheerleaders, Skarlatha and MermaidSheenaz!

Biloxi, MS.

Not a tourist trap, Daryl decides. It’s trying too hard for that. Just a town that happens to be on the muddy beach of the Gulf with some old shits in it that decided to raise up enough casinos to line the whole damn road. But it’s six hours and forty-three minutes from home and it’s not motherfucking, skank-ass Mobile, so Daryl’s calling it a win.

It’s got the distance going for it. That and the smell. At least the salt air drowns out the desperation drifting like smoke into the cracks of the wood and plaster. It’s got a Value Place, too, and $229 a week ain’t anything to shit on, so Daryl doesn’t particularly care what it looks like. If it’ll fit him and his one duffle bag stuffed full of the things that he just couldn’t part with, it’ll do.

He pays for a week even though he’s pretty sure he’ll get bored after the first few days. But a hotel, even at $70 a night, is going to run his shitty little credit card into the ground, burned up in the wake, so he’s playing it smart. And they’re not going to come for him in that time, probably never, so _fuck it all_. He’s going to stay in the damn studio room if he wants. Only they’re out of studios. All they have is a giant fuckin’-ass suite. They give it to him for the same price, though, so he won’t complain. Hell, Daryl never complains about anything.

The room is green. Which pisses him off, but he bites his tongue at it. It’s that fake kind of puke green the business fucks tend to like, the kind that tries too hard to split the difference between grass and evergreen, make the country Mississippi boys feel at _home_ , but it makes Daryl itch instead. Makes him crave the true color of pine needles and the moss and brush of the proper natural floor. And speaking of floors, fuck the dicks, they’ve made this one wood. Not true wood, even, but the painted linoleum shit that matches up nicely to the puke green walls and the turn-down darker green of the too many bedspreads that litter a suite made for a fucking family and not one down-on-his-luck Georgia boy who’s running from the fucks behind him like the damn FBI is on his scent.

But overall, for a hotel, Daryl thinks this one is nice. It’s got a shower with a fancy three-speed showerhead and an air-conditioner that sounds like a butterfly, but spins like a beast. And there’s a balcony. Fuckin’-A.

Daryl slips out onto it easily, stares at the sky that’s starting to grow long into dusk and lights his first cigarette. The town beyond is still screeching traffic, men in camo and boots taking their women in high heels and low V-necks to fancy seafood restaurants for once a year trips and drunk men stumbling along the boardwalks as they leak from the casinos. Everything down there, among the living, is about two things: plastic smiles and tits. That’s all there is here in the deep south, all the fuckers thinking they’re something else and toting about their hospitality, singing to you how welcoming they are and waiting with baited breath for you to turn your back so they can spit on it. The pretty little south, all fucked and forged.

But where’s Daryl going to go? There ain’t nothing for him North, nothing for a face like his and the dotting spots on the horizon that glow with possibility damn well don’t glow for Daryl. He’s not church enough for Jackson. Not French enough for New Orleans. Not boat enough for Mobile. And damn well too busy breathing for Atlanta. So he’s got nothing. Nothing and nowhere. Except for this little shithole named Biloxi, the smoke that fills and settles in his lungs, and a suite built for more than him.


	2. Meet a Handsome Man (And Speak to Him)

The sun is barely up, but already Daryl is on the balcony, sitting in the patio chair he bought at Lowe’s last week to replace the shitty wood one the hotel has that hurts his ass if he perches in it for too long. Which, he’ll just face it, he does every damn day. Something about the wind coasting over the railings soothes him and it fits just nicely with the stash of empty beer bottles sitting along the bottom of the chair, some standing and some toppled over like a fucking teenage cheer-monger playing a shitty game of bowling with a too-bright laugh and too-swingy hips.

Daryl frowns and knocks the few bottles that have remained standing over with his foot so they all topple into a little tinkling symphony of glass. Once he’s satisfied that no bottle has survived the massacre, he pulls his feet back up to where they were, his knees bent in and striking at the air while his toes curl around the bottom of the chair seat for purchase. This is how he likes to spend his mornings. Alone. In silence. People never do him any good, anyway.

And the light is nice, the new sun pouring across the tips of the buildings like molten lava, practically sizzling in the heat of the dying summer. It’s warm on his skin and it feels right, just about perfect. But even if it was raining, fucking pouring cats and dogs, Daryl wouldn’t step foot inside the room unless he had to. His cellphone is in there, flashing texts and calls and even if it wasn’t, the threads on the blankets remain stubbornly sewed and there aren’t broken hangers in the closet, dust curled up in the corners of the drawers. It’s not at all what he’s used to, too _fine_ for any Dixon. The outside is better for him, even if it is on a shitty white-washed wood balcony. It’s what he was made for, nothing brighter, nothing better.

So here he is. Dawn to dusk. The fucking product of the fucking system.

Nothing disturbs his morning as the sun grows higher in the sky. His ashtray on the arm of his chair piles up and he adds one more bottle to the graveyard before cutting himself off. Whatever he’ll be, he’s not going to be his daddy. Only one before sundown, he reminds himself for the millionth time. Tendencies don’t make habits.

The only thing that moves, quite in fact, are his knees. At dawn, they are straight up, slid to the sky. But as the day moves on, they tick downward to his right like a sundial until they’re resting on the arm of the chair, perched there like roosting birds, so flush against the ashtray, it’s a wonder it hasn’t gone toppling to the ground. But it doesn’t. It remains still.

That is until the door to the adjourning suite opens a little more forcefully than necessary. The tray tips at the shaking of the wood, the balconies only separated by a small white railing, and goes toppling into his lap. “FUCK!” he growls and sits up higher in the chair, puts his bare feet on the floor and starts swiping ash off his legs.

A man emerges from the other side, stepping out into the sun like he’s chasing a spotlight. He blinks at Daryl and then has the good manners to look appropriately ashamed. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Door sticks.”

Fucking asshole, Daryl thinks to himself, dusting more ash off himself and it’s only the frown that settles onto the other man’s face that clues Daryl into the fact that he said it out loud. But fine. Whatever. He narrows his eyes and works on seething to the best of his ability. Better run the fucker off before he tries to _talk_ , be _civilized_ and _neighbourly_.

Daryl sits back in his chair and slams the ashtray back down on the arm, glowers and takes a big breath of his latest cigarette, pours it out and lets the wind catch it and take it to the other side of the fence. The man, irritatingly, doesn’t react. He walks to the edge of the balcony, sticks his hands down in the pocket of his jeans and leans forward a bit, catching his groin against the railing and leaning there. He peers out over the town--not down into the streets, but over it, and there’s nothing to see there, Daryl notes, but the fucking corners of shitty buildings. Which means he’s not lookin’ to look. He’s looking to pretend like he’s looking. Goddamn southern asshat.

Daryl scoffs to himself and turns, pays him no mind. The balcony is his and the fucker’s just going to have to get used to it. What’s he want it with, anyway? Daryl’s not stupid enough to miss all the clues for what the room next to his is. Honeymoon suite. He can smell it in the air thick like honey. So the bastard’s got a girl to go back to, somewhere else to put his dick other than leaning it against the side of the railing, marking it like he’s a dog. And Daryl feels no sympathies for him and certainly isn’t going to back down. If the fucker thinks that he’s entering paradise with a pretty little thing that was wearing white yesterday, he’s got another thing coming to him. Daryl’s hardcore, solid reality and if he wants roses and candy, he better turn his scrawny ass inside and go back to the bed sheets.

Only, Daryl checks himself, maybe not. There’s not a girl walking out behind him to slip her arms around his waist, smooth like spreading butter on toast. There’s no sound from inside either, no _honey, come back to bed_ and no noise of coffeemakers grinding, hairdryers on high. And, Daryl reminds himself, last night was quiet. With an adjourning wall, surely he would have heard something, an _oh god, fuck me_ or a _yes, yes, yes, yes_. But no. Nothing. So maybe this fucker isn’t quite as straight-laced as Daryl first thought.

He takes a drag of his cigarette and studies him a little more thoroughly. Lean hips, thin and with a little snap, jeans probably hiding the outline of his hipbones just under the surface, enough flesh there to give it just that hint of intimacy, the little peek of more. Strong chest, too, with shoulders that stay up and don’t droop--firm, almost, the curve of the spine. Military? No. Not tight enough. But something with structure. Business, perhaps. Maybe law. Or police.

“Gonna stare at me all morning?” the man suddenly asks, tilts his eyes in Daryl’s direction, but keeps his jaw facing out.

Daryl grunts. “Gonna stand there all morning?” He sucks smoke into his lungs, hollows his cheekbones out intentionally, watches the little flare that ghosts across the man’s ice blue eyes. Huh, Daryl thinks with a little thrill, imagining catfish hooked on the line. _Gotcha_.

“How long have _you_ been out here?”

Daryl shrugs and lets his shoulders roll in a little sensual wave. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and licks his lips before stretching his legs out and hooking his ankles together. He drops the ash on the stick into the newly dumped tray. “Let me think...end of July?”

The man laughs, a sparkling sound that reminds Daryl of little spoons hitting champagne glasses. “Five weeks?” he asks with a smile, planting it on his lips somewhere between Georgia plastic and real human connection. “That’s awhile.”

“Ain’t got anywhere else to go,” Daryl tells him honestly.

The man nods like he understands this and then turns, sits his hip on the railing this time and pulls his hands out of his pockets, worries his left ring finger with his right thumb unconsciously, the skin white and indented from years of service. Daryl catalogs his face now that he can properly see it--the strong arc of his nose, the worry-lines indented into the wrinkle between his eyes. His face shows too much stubble, too ungroomed, and the slope of his mouth is weary. But he is strong. Not quite broken. Not quite like Daryl.

“Rick,” he says and tilts his eyes up from where he’s been staring at his hands. The fucking irises are way too blue, should be outlawed in fifty states.

“Rick?”

“My name,” he says with a tilt of his lips, “Rick Grimes.”

“Hmm,” Daryl responds, changes his legs so his right one hooks over the left.

“You gonna tell me yours?” Rick asks. “Or you hiding from something?”

Daryl shrugs. “Hiding from a lot of fucks.” He puts his cigarette out in the tray, grinds it down. “Not the law, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Good. I’m out of my county, but I’m pretty sure they still expect me to walk the thin line.”

Police, then. Fuckin’-A. “Cop? Pegged you for one.”

“Did you now?”

“That or lawyer. Way you got that stick up your ass.”

“Stick might be my ex-wife’s fault, not the system.”

Daryl shrugs easily. “Don’t matter. People are the system.” He picks up the pack of cigarettes discarded at his feet and taps them on his thigh, but doesn’t pull one out. “It’s Daryl, by the way. Daryl Dixon. But why you here, then? Biloxi don’t scream cop vacation.”

Rick scoffs and looks at his feet, sets up one of his boots on the toe, lets the other one carry his weight. “Divorced. ‘Bout a month ago everything went official. Damn thing is we had this honeymoon planned. Second one around. We were gonna give it a go. One last time. Had everything booked and ready, but she was too impatient. Couldn’t wait.”

“Wait on what?”

“Fucking my partner,” Rick says with the smooth slide of carefully polished indifference.

“Biloxi ain’t no five-star resort,” Daryl feels the need to tell him, as if he didn’t know.

Rick laughs. “God, don’t I know it. She picked it. All of it. Think she was tryin’ to tell me something?” He squints one eye in the sun and gazes over at Daryl, the smile on his lips growing and the sway to his body evident. Daryl’s been part of damn too many hook-ups to miss the look in his eyes _._ Wild. Uncontrollable. Vacant. And all Daryl has to do is get up. All he needs is to put pressure on his feet, lift himself and stand, walk over to that railing and lean himself there, tick his shoulders up and flush his biceps out, give him a thick and dirty smile. And Rick will come to him like raccoons come to meat, slink his way over and shine those pretty blues and there they go. Thirty minutes and a fuck in the sheets that should have been Rick and Mrs. Grimes. He’ll think about it all the while, Rick will, imagine what her body looks like, what her tits felt like in his hands, but he’ll get a thrill, too. _Fuck you_ , he’ll think at her, _look at what I’m doing and you're not here to see._ He’ll feel so proud of himself and he’ll smile, big and bright and wide, but it wouldn’t be for Daryl. Never is. It’s just another way of being, just another welcome mat lyin’ to his face and he’s tired of it. Tired of all the bullshit and tired of all the southern men-- _I’m yours inside these walls_.

So Daryl stays sittin’. And draws another cigarette, lights it and sucks on it like he’s sucking a cock. “Probably,” he tells Rick and turns his head away, waits the silence through until the man goes back inside.


	3. Eat a Quick Dinner (And Switch Booths)

Daryl drags his sorry ass off the balcony at about six and saunters downstairs to the lobby, pretends to check his phone for a text, even though he’s finally gotten smart enough to silence the fucking thing. But he’s not in a mood to listen to the uppity desk clerk named Glenn ask him how his fucking day is. Pure shit. That’s the answer. Just like yesterday.

But fuck it all if he doesn’t need to get out. He can’t keep treating the six-foot by six-foot balcony like it’s the perfectly squared up and painted reflection of how fucked over his life is right now and thirteen railings, an ashtray full of dust, and a slew of used bottles isn’t exactly the shit to surround yourself with for positive reflection. That and he’s fucking _starving_.

So he trots over to the Chili’s packed up against the side of the hotel so tightly it looks like it’s trying to fuck its way up into the center and says, like he always does, table for one. The hostess is beginning to recognize him, which is sad as fuck, but he’s not in the mood to feel sorry for himself. She shows him to what he’s now dubbing his table--a little sticky two-seater in the corner where he can sit with his back to the wall and no one else. He figures he’ll have to stop this pretty quickly. Even with ordering waters and the cheapest shit they have, it’s cutting into what he has left. Soon it will be the dollar menu and fucking flat-ass burgers with only one pickle. But not tonight. Tonight he’s blowing it all away like feathers in the wind.

The waitress is one he hasn’t seen before, dark hair all bunched up at the back and her shirt stretched like she refuses to admit she really fits into a medium. She approaches Daryl with a smile on her face and gives him a happy little southern hello, followed by _hon_ , and then gestures to the other seat with a frown to her lips. “Waiting for someone?”

“Just me,” he snaps off and she arches an eyebrow at him.

“That must be nice for you,” she says with that tone in her throat, the ripple of disappointment and judgement rolling happily off her tongue like a babbling brook.

“Fuckin’ is,” he says and gets joy out of the widening of her eyes. “ _Water_.”

“Sure thing,” she says, dropping both the inflection and the “hon” from her phrase. She turns tail and walks back to the kitchens and Daryl can only _hope_ that he’s the talk of the shift.

He picks up the menu even though he doesn’t need to and slouches in the little one-man booth. His eyes scan the appetizers, go through the specials. Two for twenty-five. Fuck that shit. Unless he gets one to go. He’s got a fridge and a microwave. Might be worth it. _Fiscally responsible_.

It’s his inner monologue that stops him from recognizing the man they sit at the booth across the aisle, facing the wall instead of the restaurant, putting them caddy-corner to each other. But Rick recognizes him. “Daryl,” he says as a cheerful evening greeting.

Daryl blinks at the name and shoots his menu down to see the cop lounging there, same button-up shirt as earlier, boots cast under the table artfully askew. “Come here often?” Rick asks with a little chuckle deep in his chest, the kind Daryl would otherwise want to swallow whole.

“Easiest thing to the hotel,” he grunts and then flips his menu up, pretends to study the steak options.

“Been here for five weeks, too?”

Daryl grunts and hopes that his lack of an answer will clue Rick into the absolute hostility he laces into the tension lines of his body, will allow Rick to fully see how _alone_ Daryl wishes to be. But cops don’t back down easily, even if Daryl hates a man that rises to the challenge.

“Probably know what’s good here then,” Rick continues. “Got a suggestion?”

“It’s a fucking _Chili’s_ ,” Daryl growls. “They have Chili’s in Georgia.”

Rick stops his tire-screeching, blindingly distracting smile and slides his lips into a frown. “Didn’t tell you I was from Georgia,” he says easily.

Daryl furrows his brow, but Rick is right. Two minutes of conversation on a balcony and two in a booth doesn’t equate easily to location confessions and where good ole home is. So fuck it all if Daryl hadn’t been assuming, stereotyping by the arch of the man’s neck and the money-dripping drawl rumbling from the depths of his throat. He’s peach state through and through, southern mountains and wild, ripplin’ pine. “Georgia’s easy to see. One Georgia boy to another.”

Rick stares at him for a moment before leaning forward in his booth. He puts his elbows on the table and tilts his head in Daryl’s direction, strong, thin lines of his body cascading with confidence. He pulls his boots up, tucks them close to the wood of the booth’s bottom, toes pointed at the ground again, heels up like the points of knives. “You from King’s County?” Rick asks and Daryl sighs heavily, before slapping his menu down on his table and scooting out, not even fully making his spine bend into standing as he crosses the few feet of distance between his booth and Rick’s. Rick arches an eyebrow at him.

“No use in shouting at each other if you’re not gonna take the fuckin’ hint I ain’t into talkin’.” Daryl lounges, letting his shoulders hit the booth, but his back stay away from it, a little cavern of space. He stretches his legs out, but there’s not much room in the tiny square of the two-seater, so his feet end up right beside Rick’s and what the hell, Daryl thinks, cussing himself out for being so weak, for falling for the same trap again like a fish that won’t ever learn. He slides one foot in between Rick’s, knocking his boots apart where they have caught themselves at the ankles. Rick’s eyes spin like quicksand, but his legs fall apart, Daryl’s boot resting easily between his own. “So talk,” Daryl tells him, his voice a purring whisper as he focuses so easily on how his eyes can open, how his neck can bend to the side in invite, how his lips can stay so mysteriously unmoving.

Rick falls for it hook, line, and sinker. He leans further on the table, right up against the middle dividing line between them like southern men like to do-- _don’t let the waitress know, but we know_. He licks his lips and brings one of his hands up, runs it over his jaw hard enough for Daryl to hear the scrape of stubble. “So what’s good?” he asks, and Daryl knows they’re both fucked.


	4. Drink a Margarita (And Touch Too Much)

The waitress suggests margaritas and they get drunk off them, arguing over who’s going to pay for the skyrocketing bill that Daryl can’t even stomach. He’s got nothing on him but a half-used card and a bucket full of pride, but luckily the alcohol warms his veins enough to distract him from Rick’s scrawling signature over the total line and then there’s nothing he can do about it. Nothing but pay him back in favors and since they’re leaning so close to each other on the table now, elbows practically knocking together and knees all slid up and burning, he’s got a pretty good idea of how.

Daryl stands in one fluid, graceful motion, putting more weight than he usually does on his heels. He’s a steady drunk, poised and careful like a stag, and although his steps aren’t as light as they are crawling through the southern forests with a crossbow held firm by both hands, they make do. Rick, though, is a motherfucking mess. It takes him two tries to even get his boots on the floor and then, once he stands, he falls against Daryl’s shoulder with a hefty weight and an even deeper night-laced chuckle to his frame. His smile is contagious, fucking reeking of alcohol and the little mint he swallowed, and his eyes are vile, too dark for sky, too light for water. He is the epitome of temptation. It drips off of him like radiation sticky in the air and, despite how much Daryl wants to ignore it, it’s already seeped far beneath his skin. Rick’s hand caresses him, starts at his shoulder and follows the curves of his bicep, down to his elbow, the tips of his fingers darting to the soft skin on the inside.

By now, the restaurant is looking at them and even with the cool, smooth flow of margarita indifference, Daryl knows they should go. He is always aware, will always _be_ aware of the others around him. No amount of alcohol, no amount of nicotine, no amount of the little pills Merle kept begging him to try will ever knock that out of his system. He’s a cat popped with a BB-gun, a perch that’s felt the sand on its scales. He is nothing except vigilant, nothing except the simple equation of what was is not what will be.

But still. Even with that, he takes Rick home.

Which is fucking ironic when you think about it. _Taking him home_. Rick isn’t home. His bitch of a wife probably took that with the papers. And Daryl, shit, Daryl never will be either. There never were four walls that were his, just the smoke-soaked cabin wood of his daddy’s-- _built it in the woods so no fucks could bother me_ \--and the tin can of Merle’s, hung up with posters of bikinis and cutouts of tits. Ain’t nothing Daryl can call his, ‘cept maybe the morning light on the balcony, the difference between a wood thrush and a brown thrasher and the feel of pine needles catching in the sweat of his flesh.

He’ll pretend, though. Fuck it all he likes to pretend. Likes to feign his life down upon the bodies of men, their hard dicks and curving spines. He crashes Rick into the hotel room, kicks the door shut hard enough to snap a lesser one’s hinges, throws Rick against the too-green wall and slams into him, hits his chest hard with the power of his own body. “ _Daryl_ ,” Rick grinds out, even though it doesn’t mean shit, even though it’s said the same way Martinez said it, the same as _Mark, John, Jeff, Phil, Travis, the blond man with the plugs that night, the brunette with the motorcycle, the green-eyed pretty fuck with the tattoo._

But even if the voices are meaningless, the touch isn’t. There’s nothing fake in the way it makes Daryl feel to bask in the heat of another living being, to line up their bodies smooth like a straight-edge and sink his lips, his tongue, his teeth into the side of Rick’s neck, to savor the sweat he finds there, breathe in the scent that has soaked into his skin--the ocean and smoke and lies and quick, metal points jabbing at the hearts of those roaming the streets of Biloxi. It’s all there, all its own fucking little ecosystem burned into the space between Rick’s throat and his jawline where Daryl is scraping his own skin hard enough to hurt.

Rick’s fingers are in his shirtsleeve, long and curved in like eagle talons and he’s groaning something at Daryl, something Daryl doesn’t give a fuck enough to hear until he catches words like _haven’t_ and _gay_.

Daryl blinks and slides his mouth off Rick, pulls back enough to look him in the eye. Rick is stunning, truly _stunning_ , in a way few men are. He has a presence about him, eyes like he’s actually seeing you, tongue like he’s actually speaking to you. He lifts his hand from Daryl’s shirt and pulls it through the air like he’s on strings, hesitates a millimeter from Daryl’s flesh. And then his fingers land on his cheek, just the tips, maddingly intimate for something as boring as a drunk fuck. “Want you to be the first,” he whispers and Daryl watches his eyes, alcohol-glassed, but boiling blue like the Grecian ocean, like the bottom of swimming pool mansions or Tiffany gems, things Daryl could never even think to touch. They flicker. Straight up into Daryl’s gaze, then down, sitting stone hard on his lips. Then back up, pouring themselves like steel liquid molding into place. Rick lifts his head from the wall, arches it and moves it forward slowly, cutting through the air. Daryl knows where his mouth will land, knows what the sharp intake of breath will sound like when their lips meet, the thrill it will give him, soaring him higher than any drug or any drink ever could. Because that’s what these boys do to him. That’s what they always do. Lie and hiss and slither like cobras singing under flutes and when everything is done, they discard him. Used and broken like the sheets and alleys they fuck in.

And Daryl is tired of it. He drove away from Georgia cause of this shit and he’s sure as hell not putting himself back in the line of fire. So he pushes himself off Rick, immediately feeling the gap of cold air rushing between their bodies. Rick blinks at him and reaches, stumbles a bit drunkenly from the wall, but Daryl just snarls at him and bites off a clipped, “Not that kind of guy.”

He turns, makes his boots of use and his steady legs take the brunt of weight as he walks. Behind him, Rick is talking, but his words have same impact as the rush of tires outside on the freeway.

Daryl goes back to his room, slides the keycard in and ignores the knock that follows not three minutes later and works on tuning out the softer ones after that. He hits power on the T.V, shoots the volume up to drown out sound and takes the Bud Light from the fridge, drinks until he can’t feel it anymore and passes out on top of the thread-less, perfectly remade comforter.


	5. Feel Shame for Yourself (But Be His Friend)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you guys are interested, please join the [Rickyl Writer's Group](http://rickylwritersgroup.tumblr.com/)! We've been working hard on getting a Tumblr site up and running and we are now live! And you don't just have to be a writer to join! You can be a reader/commenter/artist/other fanwork maker. We are going to have challenges, a beta-match up system, and you can suggest and vote on recommendations of fanworks! If you have fanworks, you get a member page, too! And we do Rickyl Chats on Fridays if you are interested in chatting. 
> 
> If you have questions, let me or skarlatha know! We'd be happy to answer them!

The morning is a cruel mistress. Daryl wakes up groaning, his limbs skewed at different angles, the button on his jeans cutting into his stomach, his phone to the side lighting up with message after message after message. His hair’s a mess, tangled up in fingers, and he absolutely reeks of alcohol, sweat and the deep down, gritty stench of humiliation. Fuck. What the hell was he thinking, pushing Rick up against the wall like that? And what the hell was he thinking not _finishing_ the job?

He stands on shaky legs, but manages to pull himself away from the queen sized bed only to find his stomach knot and rumble and twist strongly enough that he stumbles to the bathroom and hugs the toilet for a good ten minutes. He feels rickety and disoriented and full of shit and halfway decides to slam his sunglasses on and drag his duffle to the counter, check out and head somewhere where there aren’t fucking honeymoon suites, somewhere like Jackson, before he gets his wits about him and recognizes he could barely make it to the balcony, let alone through three, four hours of fucking traffic.

So he sheds his sticky clothes and drags himself into the tub, flops down against the porcelain and turns the showerhead on himself, lets the water pour over his body. It’s ice cold, but that’s the way he likes it after a night of drinking. Things don’t usually hit him this hard--not the alcohol and not the smooth planes of a man’s chest. But fuck it all if Daryl didn’t squeal like a startled pig and run the fuck out of Dodge. Shit, he’s a damn ass pansy.

But whatever. He’s too tired to badger himself. So he half-washes his body and shakes his hair out, manages to get some shampoo up in it and feels real fucking proud of himself for the accomplishment. And after that, hell, he’s doin’ _real_ good. He stumbles out of the tub and to the sink, brushes his teeth three times to get the heavy oil of Chili’s and Rick’s fucking neck out of it, manages to get a towel secure around his waist, and walks back into the bedroom, does a faceplant into the comforter.

Fuck, recoverin’ is hard work.

He lays there for quite some time, even manages a light doze, before he drags himself to his duffle bag that keeps getting emptied and refilled with clean laundry, but never unpacked. He pulls on one of his favorite shirts, a faded green one that’s far more comfort than fashion, and tugs on a pair of loose fitting jeans. All he’s going to do today is sit on the damn balcony and smoke. No fucking alcohol involved. Jesus.

He grabs his sunglasses from the table and slaps them on, even though it’s overcast, and slides his way outside, has a cigarette in his hand and lit before his ass even hits his chair. The day is already abuzz, being way past noon, and the cars below are honking and screeching around each other like they personally want to invade Daryl’s head and knock it around. He drags smoke into his lungs and holds it in, closes his eyes and thumps his head back against the chair.

What would it have been like? To kiss Rick? Fucking phenomenal, he’s betting. The man’s lips look like little goddamn pillows. He blows smoke out into the air and imagines that he’s blowing it straight into Rick’s mouth, imagines it coiling down against his lungs and heart, corrupting him from the inside out until he arrives at a place that’s just nasty and gritty enough for Daryl to fuck.

Goddamn, it would have been nice.

Daryl lifts the stick to his lips, takes another pull, hollows his cheeks out for no one but himself now and fantasizes about what his neighbor’s dick looks like--length, width, and colorization. Bet it’d be pretty. Damn near _too_ pretty for Daryl, but desperate, too, up and waiting for his mouth, twitching for the slide of tongue against the underside, the gentle, thrilling press of teeth. Fuck, he wants to have him. _Could’a had him_. Not anymore, though. He damn well fucked that one straight out of the gate.

But he doesn’t want it, anyway, he reminds himself. Rick’s too soft, too wide-eyed, too damn _intimate_ going in for the kiss like that. And Daryl’s not a fucking idiot. He’s never anyone’s “type,” not anyone’s first choice. And he’s not going to believe for one damn second that Rick _meant_ it, his eyes like that. That he was looking at Daryl and seeing him and not picturing his wife or some blonde pretty boy.

So fuck no. He made the right choice. Even if it stings a little.

He sighs to himself and keeps sucking the cigarette down, even though it and the lack of food are making him a little woozy. But he doesn’t give a fuck. He’s outside, in his own goddamn chair, on his own goddamn balcony with the wind blowing softly through the railings and shit, he tells himself, he’s going to have a good day. No more feelin’ sorry for himself.

That resolution lasts for about fifteen minutes, though, right up to the time that Rick smacks his door open, the fucking thing sticking again. Daryl glares at him behind the sunglasses, but keeps his mouth and his expression otherwise neutral. “Mornin’,” Rick says and Daryl can’t tell if he’s actually trying to be cheerful or putting on another front. Daryl grunts at him either way.

Rick sighs and slides outside the door, walking over to the railing separating them and slapping a brown paper bag down on top of it. “Greasy hamburger?” he asks Daryl. “Figure you haven’t had anything this morning.”

Daryl frowns. “Not my momma.”

“Don’t mean to be your momma,” Rick scoffs. “Just figurin’ an apology might be in order.” He digs out a burger wrapped up in paper and grease and throws it Daryl’s way. Daryl grunts, but grabs it easily. “Don’t know what got into me last night.”

Daryl shrugs and unwraps the burger with his left hand, the second cigarette of the day hanging lightly out of his right index and middle finger. “Most dicks ‘round here would say the devil.” He takes a big bite of the burger and swallows it, managing to not even grimace at the pickle.

“Neither one of us believe that,” Rick responds, matter-of-factly. “Didn’t mean to push you, though. Sorry about that.”

Daryl shakes his head. “Nah. My bad. Not telling you upfront what wasn’t on the table.”

Rick takes out his own burger and fiddles with the wrapper. He leans down to put his elbows on the railing and gazes over at Daryl, obviously searching for a hint of his eyes behind the dark lenses of the sunglasses. “Look, I, uh...thought I might ask something of you.”

Daryl scoffs. “We that friendly? You come here thinkin’ a burger’s gonna buy you a favor?” He takes another bite, clicks his teeth closed with it.

“You don’t owe me anything. I get that. Still, I...well, with Lori leaving me, I’m alone here for a week. And quite frankly, I’ve been pretty alone for awhile now. Most of our mutual friends chose her and I--”

“Don’t give a fuck,” Daryl tells him coldly, “about your sob story.”

Rick snaps his jaw shut and glares for a minute, before shaking his head to clear it. He unwraps his burger but doesn’t eat it. “I’m just thinking that it might be nice if I had a friend around here. And I’m thinking, despite how big of an _ass_ you are, it might be nice if that was you.”

Daryl blinks. And then blinks again. His cigarette in his hand keeps turning down ash, wasting the good stuff and the burger’s getting cold, but still it takes him quite a minute to process Rick’s request. “You wanna be _friends_?”

Rick rolls his eyes. “Well, if it’s going to take you that much effort to get your fucking prissy ass off that high horse you’re perched on, then fine. I’ll find someone else. I was just _asking_.”

Rick slaps his burger back into the bag and grabs it, his knuckles white in the grip. He spins on his heel and heads for the door and while Daryl’s mind tells him to fucking let him go, his mouth apparently isn’t caught up with the practical side of him. “Hey, Dickface,” Daryl calls, “wait up.”

Rick spins his gaze over his shoulder with a glare. “What?”

Daryl grunts and takes his glasses off, throws them down beside his feet. “You smoke?” he asks and holds out his cigarette for Rick.

Rick sighs and then shakes his head. “Nah.”

“Hmm.” Daryl pulls it back to himself and takes a drag of it. “Gonna be hard for me to be friends with a straight lacer.”

Rick’s mouth twitches, the corners curving up slow at first until it spreads across his face like the rumble of the storm blowing in. He walks back over and grabs the chair from his balcony, slides it up to the railing and sits in it. He reaches through the bars and gestures and Daryl hands over the cigarette. Rick takes it in and puts it to his lips, sucks on it and blows out smooth. “Ain’t no straight lacer,” he purrs with the barest of coughs, before handing the thing back across to Daryl.

Daryl smiles at him and lifts his burger up and Rick pulls his out of his bag and knocks it against Daryl’s in a toast. “To new friends,” Rick tells him.

“Fuckin’-A,” Daryl says back.


	6. Go Bowling (And Strike a Cord)

“Bowling,” Daryl says, nose wrinkling in disgust.

“Bowling,” Rick confirms. “It’s a friend thing to do. Don’t look so outraged.”

Daryl scoffs and puts his cigarette out in the ashtray, glances up at the sky starting to stretch into evening, dark blue glass like painted nails. He swats a mosquito trying to land on his arm and shakes his head at Rick, putting on a face of neutral surrender. “Fine. S’not like I got anything else to do and I guess I can knock down a pin or two.”

“With those arms,” Rick says with a smile, “of course you can.”

The bowling alley they pick is _Laney’s Lanes_ , just a few blocks from the hotel. The place looks like a fucking skeez den in Daryl’s opinion--the heavy moisture of the southern ocean air clinging to the old bricks--but Rick looks pumped. Daryl’s not about to ruin his good mood, either, not when the prospective of friendship is both baffling and oddly inciting, smoothing his blood out at the same time that it sets his nerves aflame.

Daryl can count the amount of friends he’s had on one hand and if he doesn’t tally all the backstabbing, skinny-faced, tooth-grinning fucks who’ve lied to him, he could stand a wood-cutting accident or two to get down to the real number. One. If family counts.

But even that one’s been lost a long fucking time ago, somewhere between the crystal and the cell bars and all Daryl’s got now in this fucked-up dirty world is himself. And some two-bit, dumb as fuck cop-on-vacation who thinks Daryl might be more than he is. Perfect.

Rick leads him into the place like they’re going to goddamn Disney World and orders up two sets of ugly red and cream bowling shoes, asking his size with only one small sinful leer. The man behind the counter, twice as big as Daryl but not nearly as mean, hands them over with a grunt and takes the four dollars Rick offers. Rick slaps the shoes into Daryl’s chest, soles first and grins to himself at the hollow smack they make against the green fabric.

Daryl grunts and looks around them at the five lanes open and dusty, the one occupied at the front by a man with a thin frown and too hard of a swing to his game, and the one at the end with a girl in a sequin mini-skirt and three guys all drooling over her legs, smooth like fake-tile marble. To their right is a concession stand, the Icee maker turning slowly with a sick grind, the gears near done and above the employee countertop check-in is a rickety wooden sign, carved with special care--“Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. --Colossians 3:6.”

_Evil desires_ , Daryl thinks and stares at Rick in front of him, the smile he gives to those that catch his eyes, the virtues of the line of his body. The man is damn well fine and Daryl knows it. And what’s worse, he knows what it’s like to have the heat of Rick’s body smoldering against him, knows what his nails feel like raking a path down Daryl’s skin, exposing goosebumps and the shivering of veins.

And he can’t fucking do anything about it. Not in a fucking bowling alley. Rick, though, hasn’t seemed to catch up with what is societally acceptable here in the south so deep the goddamn benches are fried because he reaches for Daryl. Lifts his hand and grabs his elbow, fingers slipped there into the crook. Rick squeezes the flesh he finds there, casting Daryl pupils too dilated for friends and tugs him along to an empty lane. Daryl grunts and follows, letting Rick lead him like a whipped Doberman. _Come, heel, sit, stay_.

They sit and Rick lands beside him instead of across from him, at the minimal distance to his body. Daryl flicks his eyes around, but no one is watching--the man to their right too intent on this game, the group to the left too intent on the woman’s legs. “You’re an asshat,” Daryl growls. “Don’t know any better.”

Rick shrugs and toes off his shoes, slips into the bowling ones and starts tightening the laces. “Maybe I know, I just don’t give a shit.”

Daryl grunts. “Then you’re dangerous.”

Rick stops with his laces in his hands, a bow half tied. He slides his eyes over to Daryl and catches them like a tiger pouncing upon an antelope. “Maybe I am,” he says, all pretty plantation smooth.

“Go get your fucking ball,” Daryl tells him, “if we’re going to fucking do this.”

Rick chuckles, but nods and stands after he finishes tying his shoe. He walks over to the ball rack and picks out one for himself and one for Daryl. He carries both over and Daryl takes the neon green-as-shit ball that Rick hands him. “You want first?” Rick asks, but when Daryl shrugs, he turns and stands up to the lane. He takes his sweet time getting into position, his ball up to his chest and his eyes glaring down the pins in front of him. _Daryl_ takes his sweet time staring at Rick’s ass, tight and fucking _calling_ to him, and when Rick actually starts moving, he catches a breath bubbling up in his throat and half out his lips in a gasp.

Rick moves smoothly through the air, slicing it with quick almost military-like motions that belie his police training. He lets the ball go at the appropriate time, but swings his shoulder too much and yeah, Daryl knew it. Gutterball. Rick puts his hands on his belt and watches the ball slowly thud down through the gutter. He chuckles to himself and dips his head before swinging one shoulder around so he can glance over at Daryl. “Tell you I’m bad at this? Ain’t done it since college.”

Daryl snorts. “You’re not a fuckin’ ringer, are you?”

Rick laughs and goes to pick up his ball again. “Why? What would be the sense in that?” He throws again and it’s not a gutter, but only takes down two. “Not playing for money, so all it would get me is a little flirtation.” Rick winks his eye and turns to sit down, giving Daryl the space to stand and work. Daryl grunts and glues his eyes to the lane. Rick might be bluffing, but Daryl’s not the kind to let go of a competition easily. And even if he hasn’t bowled in fucking forever, it’s all physics, all angles and swing and power. Daryl knows about that. Knows air velocities and curvature, how to stick an arrow into a squirrel from yards away when the wind is calling home in the fall. He’s aware, also, of the capacity of a man’s fist, the inertia of body weight equal to force and determination. And, too, he recognizes, of course he does, the way the tongue feels, the slant of it inside lips, the dragging coercion of it against teeth, how two bodies fit under compulsion and duress, the thick little ticks of sinew and bone sliding together in _potential_ , in _maybe_ , but never in _yes_.

Strike. Fuck yeah. Daryl knows he has it in him.

He turns back with a shit-eating grin on his face and shrugs at Rick. “All in the arms,” he clucks out, making sure to flex them a little. Rick rolls his eyes at him, but Daryl can see the creeping heat spread over his neck, the way his knee is bounding up and down across the floor. Does he think he’s going home tonight?

If they keep going like this, there’ll be no sliding back for either of them. So Daryl swallows his pride and says, “Friends picked her, huh?”

Rick’s face falls into a pinched frown and he shrugs, a quick and dirty motion of his shoulders. “Mostly society women,” he tells Daryl, standing and going to the ball return. “Lori loved her society. Liked to be proper. Guess she still does. So mostly it was _Desperate Housewives_ , you know? And their husbands. Never got along with any of them, really. Too into stock trading and not enough into baseball.”

Daryl laughs and curses himself for how it’s a real sound. “Let me guess. Braves.”

Rick’s frown turns up slightly, his mouth still firm, but tucked up at the corners. “What’s wrong with the Braves?”

Daryl shrugs and flops down into his chair, letting his legs sprawl out across the floor, emphasizing the ugly bowling shoes. “All the teams in the south are shit. In fact, the south is shit. Sorry if you didn’t know.”

Rick barks out a laugh, the looseness coming back to his frame. “We can agree on that one.” He turns to the lane and squares up his shoulders, takes a step back and aims. Daryl thinks if he reaches, he could lean forward and smack Rick’s ass, get a laugh or a sharp bark of flirtation out of him, but instead he lets Rick improve his game. Not all there, but he manages to take down seven.

“My boss,” Rick says when he’s done, sitting down across from Daryl and leaning forward, elbows on his knees and hands rubbing restlessly together, “told me to take a week off. ‘S why I’m here. Told me, actually, to ‘take as much time as I needed,’ whatever the fuck that means. Think he’s tired of me. Think he thinks I’m distracted. Won’t do the job right. Truth is...he’s probably not that far off. Shane’s still my partner. Ass that fucked my wife. Can’t really look at him too much. Supposed to be strong, I suppose. Better’n that. Not really, though. Still kind of a jealous dick.”

“Why you tellin’ me this?” Daryl asks, wishing for a cigarette. “Ain’t no shrink.”

“Yeah,” Rick says with a nod and a pretty little smile. He tips his head in a small shrug and glances up at Daryl through fine, filthy eyelashes. “You’re all I got, though.”

Daryl sighs heavily and starts tapping his fingers on the plastic chair next to him. “Ain’t much.”

“Why’s your phone keep flashing?” Rick asks, his voice a sudden hard interrogation.

“Why the fuck you care?” Daryl growls out, the fingers on the hand not tapping the chair going down to cover his pocket protectively.

“Cause I’m all you got, too,” Rick says and Daryl frowns at him. They sit like that for a moment, a fucking staring contest between two grown men until Rick finally breaks, rubs the bridge of his nose and turns away. “Your turn, asswipe,” he says, throwing his back against the chair and pulling his legs in.

Daryl keeps on frowning, willing the sourness to pollute the air around him, but he rises, grabs his ball and tosses it angrily down the lane, finishes the next round to call it a spare, and hits the seat with his ass again, muscles all tense and bitter. “Ex,” he snaps off.

Rick raises an eyebrow, but goes for his turn again. “What’d she want?”

“He,” Daryl corrects, putting emphasis and meaning into the word. “Don’t be a dick.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Rick says, still holding his ball. He swivels his gaze, though, right into Daryl’s and poisons him with dripping blue sinful lure. “ _He_.”

Daryl scowls and looks away, bores holes into the ugly orange chair across from him. “Wants to tell me he’s sorry,” he tells Rick truthfully.

“And you don’t want to hear it?”

“Don’t make any difference,” Daryl says. “Know everything he’s gonna say and I’m not in a mind to listen.”

He hears the smack of the ball as it rolls across the lane and the clink of it hitting pins down. “Could be something new,” Rick tells him, fake posh and hopefulness. “Never know.”

“Do know,” Daryl says. “Fucking slut. Never cared about me anyway, so I don’t see any reason for me to start carin’ about him.”

Rick spins his ball a second time and Daryl hears more pins, but doesn’t even bother to check the score. Rick walks over, sits down close to him,his body _burning_ and creating heat waves between the few inches of their skin. “That why you were such a dick last night?”

Daryl grunts, but decides if Rick’s gonna keep at it like a fucking pitbull with a bone, he might as well just say his piece. “Yeah. It’s the kissin’. Ain’t ever done nobody any good, so don’t fucking pretend like you're into it.”

“So...what? You’d get on your knees and blow me, but you’re not gonna kiss me?”

Daryl laughs at him, harsh and biting. “Fucking new gays,” he spits. “Ain’t that uncommon.”

Rick opens his mouth to continue, but Daryl is suddenly _done_. Far done and over it. He reaches forward and slaps off the bowling shoes, tugging his own back on. He stands, sticks his hands far down into his pockets and growls, “Need a cigarette.”


	7. Nearly Kiss a Man (And Follow Him Along)

Daryl leans against the shitty brick wall of the corner facing the parking lot and lights up a cigarette, glaring at the couple passing by on the sidewalk who are giving him the judgemental Christian eyes. He flicks his lighter closed with more force than it demands and sucks smoke into his lungs quickly, filling himself up with empty addiction. In his pocket, his phone vibrates. _Great timing, asshole_ , he thinks, but ignores it. It’s not like either one of them actually gives a fuck. It’s just the thing you’re supposed to do. You shit all over someone’s life and you apologize.

Daryl is really hoping to get a good five minute reprieve or fuck, even to catch from his peripheral vision Rick stalking back to the hotel. Unfortunately, though, he gets neither. There’s only time enough for Rick to take off his shoes, put on his boots and walk much more calmly than Daryl to the exit. Rick pushes out into the night, hands deep into his pockets, and falters only slightly in his steps toward him.

“Go home,” Daryl snaps.

Rick scoffs at him and leans on the brick wall next to Daryl, his shoulder hitting it and his body curved so that they’re perpendicular. “Yeah, no.” He licks his lips and shifts, pulls up one boot to hook over the other one, toe into the ground and heel up. “Gonna say somethin’ first.”

“Fuck you.” Daryl turns away, sucks in smoke again.

“You’re an asshole,” Rick tells him, like Daryl doesn’t know. “You know why you’re such a goddamn dick-whore? Because you think it’ll drive me away. Like it drove everyone else away, fair bet.”

Daryl blinks and pulls his cigarette out of his mouth, stares at the lighted end slowly burning. He flicks off the ash to the side and turns to Rick, casts his gaze up and down his body without expectation for the first time since he saw the man. Rick is catching him now, deductions and observations flying through the clear glass film beating through his eyes. “I’m a cop,” he says, and shuffles forward an inch on the wall. “Can’t hide from me. So stop being a little _shit_.”

“And what makes you give a fuck about me?” Daryl stares at him while he asks, watches the little shiver in Rick’s shoulders against the wind, the twitch of his knee holding his bodyweight, the movement of his neck, stretched out and head tilted to the side in exposure.

“Because,” Rick scoffs and steps forward, right up into Daryl’s personal space, so goddamn tight and close no one passing by could see them for otherwise, “despite what you think, I really _do_ want to kiss you. You fucking asswad.” He smiles, just a jerk of one side of his mouth up and comes closer, leaning into Daryl who, surprisingly, is leaning in as well, turning his body so they face one another. Their noses slide together and Rick breathes Daryl’s smoke in. He smiles, his eyes alight, but too close for Daryl to focus on. “So do you want to kiss me? Or are you going to flip your shit like last night?”

Daryl grunts and moves ever so slightly, runs his nose over Rick’s and then leans their foreheads together. “I’m bad news,” he whispers, the light of the hissing parking lot lamps missing them and leaving them in darkness. “Fuckin’ break your heart.”

“Does it look like I give a shit?” Rick asks with a laugh that Daryl can feel rattling down through his bones, settling into his blood higher and more powerful than things like genetics, like ancestry.

“Maybe you should,” Daryl answers. “Pretty little thing like you, recently divorced and lookin’. Heart’s probably not too hard yet.”

“You don’t know,” Rick says, eyes fluttering and body shifting so that Daryl’s back hits the wall and Rick comes forward in front of him, blocking him in and suddenly aggressive and sensual, “what I’m capable of. But guess what, Daryl?” Rick says with a flick of his nose against Daryl’s again, a press of his chest and his lips feather light in the space between them. “I’m not going to kiss you. Even though,” his voice drops down into the smallest of whispers, sound so low Daryl strains to hear it, “I know you want me to. No...I think I’m going to make _you_ do it. Someday when you’re ready to. When you decide you want to _fuck me_ , stick your tongue down my throat and your cock in my ass. But not until then. Fuck no. I’m not a two-bit midnight fuck you take home and throw away in the morning. I’m goddamn special. So you better come for me. ‘Fore I decide I’m tired of waiting.”

And then, with a rock of his heel and a sparkle to his eyes, Rick pulls back, spinning himself around in one fluid motion and heading across the parking lot, snapping his boots as he goes. Daryl stares at him, takes in a long drink of his shoulders, his waist, and ass. _Fuck that bitch_ , he thinks to himself and stares down at the cigarette held lightly between his index and middle finger. And then, like fucking destiny pulling him onward, he pushes himself from the brick with a growl and follows at the cop’s heels, cussing himself out for not having the balls to turn away.

“What’s his name?” Rick asks when Daryl’s steps fall into line with his.

“Where the fuck are we going?”

Rick chuckles. “I asked first,” he answers, rounding a corner and keeping up a good pace on the sidewalk.

Daryl sighs heavily and lifts his cigarette to his lips, lets it dangle out of them while he speaks. “Martinez.”

“Kind of a weird first name.”

“Not his first name.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Caesar.”

“Then why didn’t you say that?”

“Don’t fuckin’ call him that, so why would I?”

“You don’t call your boyfriend by his _first name_?” Rick asks with a scoff.

“Ain’t my boyfriend.”

“Well, he was.”

“Nah, he wasn’t. Stop being a _dick_ , actin’ like you know the story.”

“Well, you ain’t _telling_ me the story.”

Daryl sighs and drops his hand, dumps the ash on the stick away and blows into the muggy night air. “Fine. We were...fuck buddies. That’s it. He was hot and I was hot and we were hot together. Never got serious. He didn’t want that. Too tied up in...ah, fuck it, I don’t know. His past I guess. Exes. Kids.”

“He had kids?” Rick asks, voice curving high in curiosity.

Daryl snorts. “Yeah. Two of ‘em. Boy and a girl.”

“Divorced?” Rick slows his steps down. Daryl matches his motion and the change in pace gives Daryl a minute to drag on the cigarette again, think through his words.

“Yeah. Lived in the same school district. Had ‘em on Monday to Wednesday.”

“Hmm,” Rick says, sticking his hands further down into his pockets. “Usually get the weekends.”

“Was a bartender,” Daryl clarifies. “Needed his weekends. S’why he’s not here. With me. Or at least, that’s why I tell myself he’s not here with me. Needed to stay for the kids.”

“Why’d you leave?”

Daryl scoffs and shakes his head, finally tosses his cigarette away onto the curb. “Nah. You’ve asked too many goddamn questions already. Your turn. How many kids you got?”

Rick blushes, the pink covering his cheeks nicely into a pretty flush under the streetlights. “Just one. Carl. We...custody hasn’t been decided yet.”

“Sure when it is, you’ll go back.”

“He’s my kid,” Rick says, rattling off the sentence like it means something that Daryl just isn’t _getting_. And it probably does. Daryl’s never had kids, never had one to worry about, never had one to hold him back. Not that he doesn’t have other bags of horseshit that hold him back.

“You two are a lot alike,” Daryl says instead of what he means to say. _Fuck off, I’m done with this shit_.

“He hurt you, huh?” Rick sleuths, like it’s some kind of goddamn mystery.

“Nah,” Daryl thumbs his phone in his pocket. “Didn’t do shit. That’s kinda the point. Don’t like talking about it, though. So where we going, dickface? Or you just walkin’ me around to get me to talk about my goddamn feelings?”

Rick rolls his eyes, but casts his gaze about. “Don’t know, really. Thought about heading downtown. I just wanted to get out. See the place. Been a long, _long_ time since I’ve seen anything but the inside of a cop car and my house.”

“Downtown’s east,” Daryl feels the need to tell him. “You’re walking north.”

Rick sighs and slows to a stop, gives Daryl a seething glare and then turns to his right, down a cross street. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a real _peach_ to hang out with?”

Daryl snorts. “You never met my brother. Don’t know a peach till you spent a little time with Merle.”

“And why isn’t _he_ with you?” Rick asks, his voice light and curious again.

“Jail,” Daryl says honestly. “And before that jail, drugs, jail and more drugs. He’s all the family I got and he’s so fucked up half the time, he don’t know if it’s dawn or dusk.”

Rick wrinkles his nose and gathers his breath, but Daryl smacks him in the shoulder hard enough to jostle him. “Don’t you fucking say you're sorry or any of that shit. Didn’t take you to be a damn ass fool.”

Rick swallows his words down and shakes his head. “Fine. Won’t say a damn thing. So you’re really out here by yourself, huh?”

Daryl shrugs. “Ain’t that unusual.”

“Why Biloxi? Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s kind of a shithole.”

Daryl snorts and shakes his head. “ _Hate_ Biloxi. Full’a nothing but skanks and hoes. But it’s better’n Mobile. And a goddamn castle next to Georgia. All these tourist towns...they’re only half-Southern. Means they’re only half-fucked. So it’ll do.”

“So why don’t you go north?” Rick asks, shrugging.

Daryl laughs. “You think I’m good enough for that? _North_. Goddamn.”

Rick frowns and tips his head down. “You have an awful low opinion of yourself.”

“Well, so do you. Hanging out with me.”

Rick reaches out, grabs onto Daryl’s bicep and pulls him to a stop. “I’ve got half a mind to smack the stupid out of you. You act like you’re not the hottest thing since Angelina Jolie started acting.”

Daryl grunts and raises his eyebrow in a challenge. “Sure you’re gay?”

“No,” Rick says easily, “not a goddamn bit gay. Bisexual as all shit, sure. But get your terms right.”

Daryl rolls his eyes. “ _Whatever_ ,” he snaps and keeps walking. They’re hitting the edge of downtown now, buildings scummy and neon bright, people flitting to and fro like this is motherfucking New York and they’re the shit on top of the world. “Where you wanna go?” Daryl asks, flicking his gaze around uneasily.

Rick pauses and scans what’s close to him and then points out the little building in the corner, the dark sign above the door in flourish font-- _Pecker Joe’s_.

“Ah, fuck no,” Daryl says with a growl. “Ain’t going in no gay bar.”

“Why?” Rick asks with a chuckle. “Aren’t you gay?”

“Aren’t you not?”

“Do you always answer questions with questions?”

“Are you always this annoying?”

Rick huffs and squares up his shoulders, looking at the door to the club, open and wide, voices and hard laughter flitting out into the night air. “Never been in a gay bar. Wanna try it out.”

Daryl scowls. “I’ll save you the trouble. Nothin’ in there but a bunch of pricks and some loud music. Let’s go back. Hotel’s got some good cable.”

“No,” Rick says, setting his jaw in defiance. “I’m going in. You can follow me or go home.”

“I’m really not going in there,” Daryl tells him, “no matter how cute your ass is.”

Rick sighs and steps forward, crosses the street with quick. light steps. He gets to the other side and casts his gaze Daryl’s way, winks with all the flirtation in his eyes and hips. “See you at home, then!” he calls across the street and ducks into the bar.

Daryl frowns, fucking glares at the posh-looking hipster fuck-it-all sign and then turns with a quick snap of his body, stomping back up to the Value Place.


	8. Watch a Man (And Dream)

Daryl stays up on the balcony smoking and nursing a Sam Adams until well past midnight, long enough to be present when Rick stumbles into his room, to see the flash of light through the curtains when the lamp shimmers on. He can hear Rick shuffling inside, watches the vague outline of the man tripping around furniture, discarding his pants, and hitting the bed with a rather glorious, ah-amen flourish.

Daryl grunts, his nerves sighing in relief that Rick’s shadow isn’t accompanied by another slithering in from _Pecker Joe’s_. He takes a long drink, tries not to imagine what it would be like beyond those curtains, inside the fucking doesn’t-it-beat-all honeymoon suite, inside the pretty, stretched out boy laying on the bedspread. _Fuck_ does Daryl want him, want to thrust on top of him, slide their skin together like sinful music beating out its own erratic rhythm.

His eyes close with a groan and he _imagines_. He knows what the room looks like, all shitty ass green with floral accents. Rick would be laying there, _is_ laying there--Daryl knows that much--half naked and eyes heavy-lidded, his stomach pressed to the fabric below him. Daryl would bite his lip, worry at the inside of his cheek and slide his hand up over Rick’s ass, bare in his imagination, little goosebumps shivering under the fan of the air conditioner. Rick would moan, his lips falling apart with the sound and twist his head just slightly to stare at Daryl moving over him.

And then Daryl _would_ move over him. Step up onto the bed, hands first and then knees, press himself down into Rick and slide his arm underneath his stomach, pull him up so Rick’s ass brushed against the fabric of his jeans. He would be straining--is _already_ straining, out here on his private balcony with no one but God to see.

Rick’s body would be hot under him, a fucking goddamn _furnace_ and Daryl would let the groans start falling out now, the animalistic _I have to take you_ sounds. He would unbuckle himself with shaking hands, find the bottle Rick slipped into the hotel drawer by the bed, nestled right there next to the Holy Bible, and then it would all go fast, time slipping through the air like Daryl’s fingers slipping inside and then Rick would tell him, whisper or shout, Daryl doesn’t give a _fuck_ , but Rick would say _take me_ and Daryl would push inside, firm like gears spinning and soft like weekend afternoons.

Daryl moans, cuts himself off in the middle of it and opens his eyes, sees that Rick hasn’t moved. The damn fucker is probably passed out, drunk off his ever-lovin’ ass and Daryl’s not gonna get a piece of it tonight, but fuck it all he can dream. He tosses the cigarette he was holding into the ashtray, burned to nothing with none of it having entered his lungs, and then reaches for his pants, opens them and takes himself out. The world is quiet around him, the hotel dark and there’s only roofs below, no building high enough here to see. Not that he gives a shit. He’s too far gone, boiling with alcohol and too high on his thoughts. So he strokes himself, takes a long look at the shadow draped over the bed so that it’s burned into his memory, and closes his eyes, returns to the moment.

Slipping inside. Rick moaning, whining like a fucking dog in heat. Daryl’s body out of control, thrusting too fast, but Rick hissing his pleasure at it. Daryl’s hand would ripple up his back, curve a path like he was tracing the Mississippi and then his fingers would hit those curls, nails digging in and holding and Rick would come off the bed, fucking alive, bucking into him and raising, hands and knees, ass and stretched, gasping throat.

And Daryl would take him, fucking _take him_ , hard and hot like heat waves on the pavement and that would last for awhile until Rick’s sounds got lower, longer, _desperate_ and _bold_. Rick’s skin would sing to him, blood pumping with one sole purpose, and Daryl would lean down, press against him--metal on metal, so solid now--and the things he would say, the words he would form, the flood of it right there against the curve of Rick’s ear, crashing in, pulling not only Rick’s body to him, but everything else, too. The fucking _promises_ he would make.

They would come. Together, like some goddamn fairytale soulmates drawn toward each other by a gust of wind and Daryl would know, fuck he would know. _This is the one_ and all that goddamn horseshit that never works out in real life, that’s never what you thought it was gonna be. But it sure is nice. To think about it. So Daryl thinks about it, thinks about Rick turning and kissing him, eyes warm like the sand under Daryl’s toes, saying things like _yours_ and _forever_ , his skin still sweaty with the action of their bodies and on the balcony, alone and touched by only himself, Daryl comes.

He opens his eyes and calms himself with deep, gasping breaths. The strings of white color his lap, his knee, and fade on the balcony against the white-washed wood. Daryl thumps his head back against the chair and groans, loud and uncensored, his forehead wrinkling and his hand finally coming off of his cock. He shakes his fingers off the side to dispel what sticky residue caught onto his hand and huffs out an unhappy breath. He’s so goddamn _fucked_ in so goddamn many ways.

Beside his feet, the Sam Adams bottle sits half empty and he makes a twitch to pick it up, but decides otherwise. He’s got a bountiful pick of other cages in his life, why fucking add to it? For a moment, a brief wisp of time, Daryl thinks Merle has it better. That the meth and the metal bars right in front of his face are a lot more fucking forgiving than the square of Daryl’s jail cell--Georgia to Texas to Kentucky.

Why can’t he be who he is? Why the fuck does it matter where he sticks his dick? Isn’t there a place, some goddamn fucking island somewhere in the whole goddamn sea where he can stand next to a man and touch his arm, reel him in with hopeless, naive laughs and smiles that are as fucking contagious as the goddamn flu?

But there’s not. Fuck no. There’s nowhere in these walls to hide. The good Bible-thumping belt spreads its light over everything, sickeningly bright and nauseating, leaving no shadows for good ole boys like Daryl to retreat to. He’s fucking tired of it. Fucking _sick_ of walking around, pretending like his boots are other people’s boots, making steps and jokes and twitches and grins like straight men, like something he’s _not_. He would have come out years ago, so _long_ ago, if he could have. But look at what it gets you. It gets you nothing. _Nothing_. Not when the people who know you best, the ones that are supposed to _support_ you, the ones that are supposed to be your _kind_ , your _friends_ , your _community_ spit on your ass like scorpions stinging their handlers.

It’s fucking bullshit. That Daryl knows who he is. That he loves who he is. And that no one in this whole goddamn motherfucking sick-ass world will love him back.

He stands, kicks over the bottle and is stupidly satisfied when it goes careening between the bars of the balcony and crashes down to the sidewalk below in a shower of glass and dirty liquid. He snorts out a harsh chuckle to himself and slams open his balcony door, steps inside and throws it shut. On the bed, his jacket is thrown, his phone half dumped out of the pocket with the light flashing a missed call. _Martinez. Martinez. Martinez_.

Daryl has half a mind to call him back, but that’s dumb as sipping coffee in July. Martinez isn’t his one. Was never gonna be. And if by some miracle and twisted fate of the goddamn universe, he _was_ , it wouldn’t ever happen anyway. Martinez is south through and through. Like Daryl is south through and through, stuck like a dog on a chain unable to make an escape. Or more than that, like one of them fucking invisible fences, collar wound so high on his neck, electrocuting him when he steps away from home.

Even though this isn’t home. Will never fucking be. But it doesn’t matter. Because Daryl’s afraid, the prospect of the state lines shaking his bones down to his core. He’s a lost cause, a shiny toy of the system, and for him to break away... _fuck_ , he can’t do it alone. And the real goddamn shitty thing is...well, it’s that there isn’t anyone around to help him.

He’s got no one. And he never will.


	9. Bring Him Breakfast (And Disclose)

In the morning, Daryl goes to Burger King. He steps up to the counter and orders two of those damn croissant sandwich things with all the meat piled on top so Rick can pick and choose, joyful at the cheap-as-fuck price, and then on the way back, pops little hashbrown rounds into his mouth like candy. He figures he’ll return the favor Rick gave to him when he was piss-ass drunk and so he takes the stairs two at a time all the way up to their floor, slipping through his room like it’s only another damn hallway, and emerging straight onto the balcony.

He sets the bag on the railing and slams his fist into Rick’s sliding door, banging the glass and hearing the loud cursing groans from within.

“BREAKFAST,” Daryl calls, sticking a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and fishing in his pockets for his lighter.

By the time Rick _does_ emerge, Daryl has finished off his hashbrowns, lighted and gone halfway through his cigarette, and has begun to contemplate diving into _Rick’s_ hashbrowns, but all that disappears like dew under the sun when Rick steps out onto the balcony.

To be perfectly fair, he looks like shit. And not like pretty shit from celebrities, either. Like stinky horseshit. One side of his hair has been smashed flat, looking like the legs of roadkill sticking straight up from gutted bodies. The other half is in disarray wilder than a tornado, curls licking into each other and knotting up in ways so complicated, Daryl’s pretty sure Rick’s gonna have to shave his head to get it all right again.

He’s squinting, too, one of his pretty blue eyes shut, the other one blurry from sleep and he keeps sniffing like he’s doing that thing where one of his nostrils is stopped up and the other one’s running on overdrive. His stubble is a mess, there’s sleep lines all over his body, and one of his nipples is poking out awake, while the other one hasn’t caught onto the morning yet.

Which brings Daryl to another point. All Rick’s got on are his boxers.

Daryl swallows hard, the motion sucking in a godawful amount of smoke from the cigarette dangling in his lips, and he’ll be damned if it doesn’t send him straight into a fucking _sexy as shit_ coughing fit. Daryl rips the cigarette from his mouth and turns, coughing into his side of the balcony. Rick, for his part, grumbles and shuffles his bare feet across the wood. Daryl’s eyes peel to him like water-soaked napkins, unable to keep their gaze away even if Daryl’s coughing has started to prick tears at the corners of his eyes.

Rick’s skin looks _warm_. Warm and _real_. Inviting. Daryl’s captivated by it--by the slope of his shoulder blades, the knock of his knees, the slim waist and the motherfucking _happy trail_ that starts above the navy blue boxer waistband. Daryl’s eyes slip like oil on water over Rick’s bellybutton, the smooth planes of his chest, the rather prominent and strangely dipped collar bone. Daryl wants to put his mouth there, taste Rick’s skin so primal and _new_ in the morning light, breathe him in like he’s the very air itself.

But, he reminds himself, nothing comes of that ‘cept heartache. And Daryl’s heart’s too worn down to take anymore. So instead he tosses the bag into Rick’s lap when Rick sits on his chair, satisfies himself with the little grunt he gets in exchange. “Wat’s this?” Rick mumbles, speech slurred and sleep-heavy. He digs in the bag and makes a happy groan at the hashbrowns, starts throwing them in his mouth. “Fuck,” Rick keeps slurring, “could kiss you.”

Daryl smiles, quirking one side of his mouth up. “Don’t fancy no tequila breath.”

Rick laughs and then groans and furrows his brow, putting his head in his hands. “ _Stop_ ,” he whines. “Laughin’ hurts.”

“Well, probably shouldn’t a’been so fond of old Jose,” Daryl clips, falling into his chair all sprawled.

“Jim Beam,” Rick grunts, “not Jose.”

“Either way, you’re fucked,” Daryl says with a chuckle.

Rick shrugs his acceptance of that and waves at Daryl’s side of the fence. “Cigarette.” He holds out his hand. “Give me.”

“Fuck you,” Daryl says with a good-natured snort. “I ain’t giving you any of my shit. Already bought you motherfucking breakfast.”

“You’re such a dick,” Rick tells him, waving his hand again. “I want it.”

Daryl chuckles. “Addiction already gotcha, huh?”

“Well, you did,” Rick says with a little sparkle of his eyes. “Now fucking give me a fucking cigarette.”

“Already said no, you goddamn whore, but here…” Daryl scoots his chair up right next to the edge and leans over it, his upper body cut as he stretches, muscles defined and straining. He curls his fingers, calling Rick over and leans his neck forward. Rick grunts and scoots himself closer, leaning over as well so they are both elbows on the railings, toes digging into the wood slats for purchase, holding them at the edge of their seats. “Give you a hit,” Daryl whispers and then lifts the cigarette between their mouths, already inches apart, and puts it up right next to his own.

Rick’s eyes are no longer blurry, but wide and awake, smoother than wood-deep ponds covered with overgrown lilypads. He watches with quick, sharp motions as Daryl sucks in his breath, the tip of the cigarette glowing hot while it burns. Daryl holds that motion and pulls it from his lips, lets his hand fall away on the side. He leans forward just the barest inch and Rick, keen and pointed, opens his lips, lets them fall apart like fruit from the peel and Daryl blows, transfers the smoke and his desire from his lungs to Rick’s. Rick breathes him in, his intake crackling like forest fire, and he laughs at the end of it--a deep, reverberating sound hidden thick in his chest. “You’re a little bitch,” he whispers and reaches, his fingertips touching Daryl’s shoulder and sliding down his bicep to his lower arm to his wrist to his hand. He lifts Daryl’s palm, the hand holding the cigarette and brings the stick to his own lips, turns Daryl’s fingers for easy access and sucks on the end of it. “You know why,” he growls, low and hot, blowing the smoke out of his mouth, “I didn’t bring anyone home with me?” He takes the cigarette from Daryl’s fingers, limp and too caught up in Rick’s body to notice. He brings it to his mouth, takes another hit. “Still waitin’ on you,” he rumbles out with a wink and then leans back in his chair, stretching his legs out and letting his body go boneless and relaxed, the nearly-gone cigarette held so prettily in his fingers.

Daryl opens his mouth to respond, to throw out some kind of words that will get Rick back on the straight-and-narrow, tell him what and what not this goddamn is, but before any sound leaves his lips, his phone rings. He curses it and reaches in his pocket, glares at the offending thing and Martinez’ number. He swore he had the fucker on silent--must have hit the button sometime when he was jostling it around--but there it is, ringing clear in the morning air like choruses of laughter.

Rick leans forward again, tries to swipe it from him. “ _Fuck off,_ ” Daryl growls and denies the call.

Rick huffs. “Why won’t you talk to him? I’ll answer it for you, if you’re going to be a pussy about it.”

“Don’t fuckin’ know the half of it, man,” Daryl tells him. “So don’t try to get involved in this horseshit.”

Rick stares at him for a moment and then shrugs, sits back again. “What’d he do to you?”

“ _Nothing_.”

“Gotta have done something for you to be so uppity about a phone.”

Daryl shakes his head and sets his jaw tight. There’s no way in goddamn hell he’s going to talk to Rick about all his fucking problems. _Rick_ , the near stranger, the fucking divorced cop he met two days ago, who knows no one and nothing about his life. Except...well, fuck it all if Rick wasn’t right. If all they have is each other.

And what’s it going to do, anyway, to voice it? Make it worse? Daryl scoffs to himself. As if that’s even fucking possible. So why not? Why not tell Rick what he’s goddamn itchin’ to know?

“Went to this gay bar,” Daryl starts, sighing heavily and fishing for a new cigarette in his pack. He takes one out, doesn’t light it, but holds it in his fingers for something to do, rolling it around listlessly between his knuckles. “For a long time, I went to this bar. _Woody’s_. Was like, I don’t know, a home or somethin’. Daddy never liked fags, so never expected him to like me and Merle used to beat up queers for fun, so I was just another dumb fuck alone in the world. Ain’t anything surprisin’ in Georgia. Found this place, though.” Daryl grimaces, pulls up the cigarette before he remembers it’s unlighted and drops his hand down again. “Was nice, for awhile. Me and the bartender had a thing. That’s Martinez. Was a good guy, I thought. Never made anything official, but had a good time fucking. Spent years there until…” Daryl sighs. “Fuck. Martinez had some friends come in. Philip and his boy, Milton. Couple others. Philip was a real jackass, a deep down fuckin’ dick, but whatever. He was the bartender’s friend, right? Milton was alright, though. But one of those guys that…” Daryl waves his hand around in the air uselessly, “...that act like they ain’t got anyone, you know what I mean? Wanted to _talk_ all the time. Everyone else avoided him, but fuck, I was a nice guy, right? Sure I was. Before this shit. So we hung out once or twice. Nothing big. Just two buddies and a beer. Philip didn’t fuckin’ think so, though. Got green, green, green.”

Daryl shifts in his seat, eyes the unlit cigarette and Rick’s body across from him, still naked and calling, beautiful like a fucking art piece hung in a gallery. “Got this call. On a Sunday, I remember. Thought that was fucking weird, but whatever. Was my boss. I worked for a repair company that didn’t do weekends, but I didn’t think too much of it. He said that I’d have some bad reviews, which was horseshit. I was employee of the month two months ago. But he said I’d been slippin’ and he had to let me go. Thing was...I just assumed I was shit. You know? Took him at his word. Til Merle called that afternoon. Fuck, I can remember what he said. Crystal clear, burned in my fucking mind like my brain cells need to use their power to hold this shit for me. Merle said he was sorry. He was nearly crying, the fuckwad. Saying he was _sorry, so sorry, sorry_...that he hadn’t been there for me. ‘Cause if he hadn’t been in jail all that time or out chasin’ some damn high he woulda made sure his baby brother didn’t turn into no fag.” Daryl scoffs. “That’s what he fucking said to me. And goddamn if I didn’t think it was fuckin’ _nice_ of him. Shit.”

Daryl sighs again, tosses the unused cigarette into the ashtray. “Philip had gone and told everyone I ever knew. And the worst part was everything I had thought, all those _what ifs_...what if I came out, what if I told Merle, what if I acted like who I really was...that was all motherfucking true.” Daryl shrugs. “And what hurt the _most_ was all those _dicks_ at the bar, every last one of ‘em, told me I had this _coming_. Why wasn’t I out? Why was I messing with Milton? Fuck. Because I was trying to _survive_ , you know? And be a fucking decent human being. But fuck no. No, you can’t be in this society. And you know what, Rick? Every one of those goddamn, motherfucking, shit-faced _pricks_ was closet, too. Fuckin’ all of us were. Cause you had to be. Cause the only one in that whole bar that had ever bothered to stick his neck out and wave a goddamn rainbow flag got ganked in the parking lot one night. Beat until he was in a _coma_. Died three days later. That’s the life you live in the south. That’s what it fucking _is_. But they judge me for it. So no. I wasn’t gonna stick around. Wasn’t gonna hear what my daddy had to say. Wasn’t gonna wait on any of them to _apologize_ because I wasn’t going to accept it anyway. They were supposed to be my _family_. And fucking Martinez... _shit_. He was the worst of them. So he’s calling me now, to say he’s sorry, I’m sure. But I don’t want to goddamn hear it.”

Rick stays sitting in his seat, his eyes on the stub of the cigarette. When he finally looks up at Daryl, it’s with a concentrated effort, his whole body turned to listening. “That’s why you didn’t want to go in the bar last night.”

“ _Fuck bars_ ,” Daryl growls. “And fuck the skanks that are in ‘em. Acting like they’re high and mighty. Like there ain’t anything outside their walls. I fucking _hate them_. And I’ll tell you one thing, too.” Daryl jabs his finger at Rick. “I hate you, too. Walkin’ around like nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

Rick shrugs and keeps his voice even. “My ex-wife and my son already know.”

“Bet your boss doesn’t, though,” Daryl counters. “Even in Biloxi, words _travels_. And even if he fucking did, so what? One of these days, some goddamn repressed prick is gonna see you, take a tire iron to you and swing. Fuck. You act like you don’t _know_. And I don’t want to go through this, okay? You’re so goddamn pretty, I don’t want to see you broken. And I don’t want you to break me, either.”

“So what?” Rick scoffs. “There’s nothing to do? Nowhere to go to be who you are?”

Daryl shakes his head and grinds his teeth. “Maybe Boston is different. Seattle or New York. Might as well be Mars with how fucking far that is away, though. And it ain’t like either of us would ever fit in. I’m a fucking Dixon. They named a fucking _line_ after me. I don’t belong in the north.”

Rick snorts. “Sounds like to me, you don’t belong in the south, either.”

“Yeah,” Daryl says, his voice the full extent of his fire and sorrow. “I don’t.”


	10. Pour Him into Bed (And Don't Kiss Him)

Right around dark, Rick slides himself out to the balcony again. He’s dolled up, dressed to a T, and appropriately attired for the evening--three buttons undone on his shirt, jeans sitting low on his hips, boots worn like a working man but shiny like a dick lookin’ to get laid. He’s fancy as all hell and twice as smooth, but Daryl can’t help but wish for the morning Rick back, the body before it was touched to glamour, the eyes that hadn’t quite hardened into seduction just yet.

“Going out?” Daryl asks from his side of the railing, ass in his seat like it’s been since the sun got high.

Rick shrugs, sticking his hands into his pockets. He looks out over Biloxi, the crappy rusted out roofs with nails gunshy to hold their weight. “‘Less you give me a reason not to.”

Daryl sighs and shakes his head, taps his foot against the wood for something to do. “Don’t know why you think you gotta _go_.”

Rick snorts, lifts one hand from his pocket to run through his curls. “Look, this is my fourth day here and I only got six. Tonight and tomorrow...I’m free to do whatever the hell I want. Day after that, though, gotta pack up, rest, then leave in the morning, drive back to Georgia. And when I get there, there ain’t anything for me but _respectable_. So if I’m going to be wild, _shit_. I’ve got two nights.”

“Why you wasting time on me, then?” Daryl asks, his mouth too quick for his brain to slap him one, deter him from asking stupid-ass questions. Daryl is _convenient_ , one door down. That’s all it fucking is and neither of them should have to hear it out loud, cast to the smoke tinted sky.

Rick, though, takes it all in stride. He shrugs again, pretty and quick. “I’m a cop,” he says, throwing Daryl off his game like a fish spitting out the hook. “Let me tell you somethin’ about me.” Rick walks forward, puts his hands on the railing and leans there, body all angles and _come here, baby_. “Police training taught me one thing. And that’s to smell bullshit a _mile_ away. I’m not buying into any of that dumbass crap you got spewing out of your mouth. You act like you're above it all, like you don’t _want_ Martinez’s apology, like you don’t _want_ a place where you can be open, don’t _want_ a man in the next hotel room practically panting for you. But hey. That’s alright. If you want to keep blowing smoke out your ass, be my guest. I’m not your momma. But I ain’t buying one damn cent of it. I know you want me. And man, will this blow your socks off--I want you, too. But that’s your fucking decision, isn’t it? To decide if you’re going to set all that crap aside or not.”

“Ain’t no reason,” Daryl tells him before he can shut up, “why you should want me.”

Rick snorts. “You think you’re smart as shit, but you’re really just as dumb as a pile of bricks. Course I want you. Course there’s reasons to want you. You’re a damn good man. You just _really_ hate to let on that you are.” Rick licks his lips and turns then, lets go of the railing. “I’m going to walk down to _Joe’s_. Tonight. Tomorrow, too. And you just come get me if you decide to and I’ll drop everything I’m doing, I can promise you that. But I’m not going to sit over here on my ass and wait for you to grow a pair. So…” he shrugs. “Your decision, cupcake.”

And then he’s gone, flitting through the door like a moth at night, his boots clacking against the wood and then silent on the carpet just inside. Daryl watches him go and his frown gets tighter and harder the further Rick gets away. _Fuck that slut_. He’s not going after him. He’s _not_. Son of a bitch cop who probably never hurt for a thing in his life, never knew _struggle_ , going to tell him what is and isn’t true? Well, fuck him. _Fuck him_. Daryl’s not a goddamn pussy. If he wanted it, he’d _go for it_.

And yeah, sure, maybe he does want it. Maybe there’s lust down in his veins. But it ain’t lust he wants to have, not something he’s keen to let himself slobber over like a fucking dog in heat. Shit, no. Daryl Dixon’s not that kind of man. Not the guy that’s goes _chasing_ after a frilly little teasing skirt, even if the skirt has blue eyes like spring rain, hip bones like the cut of the state line on the coast. He’s not going to be swayed by _looks_ or by Rick’s sinful little leer, his come hither neckline, the way his skin sings dirty litanies that sound like southern prayers.

_Fuck no_. If Daryl’s anything, he’s a stubborn ass. So he keeps sitting there, on his balcony, not doing _shit_ until the deep hours of the night. He picks up his Sam Adams, drinks a bottle and a half, grabs the newspaper left on his doorstep and does the crossword section by the light of the hotel room lamp filtering through the blinds, starts picking up beer bottle caps and seeing how far he can skip them across the railing, and generally does everything in his power to stay fucking _here_ and not go gallivanting off to _goddamn Pecker motherfuckin’ Joe’s_.

And he is not, _not_ , absolutely _not_ waiting up to see what whore-fuck Rick brings back to his room. Even if it does get to be three a.m. and he’s starting to get really fucking tired.

Good thing for him, though, Rick drags his sorry ass in about twenty minutes after three, tripping through his hotel room without even turning the lights on. He busts out onto the balcony, door creaking again, boots lopsided as they try to hold him up his spine, laughing breathlessly and red-faced with drunkenness.

“Well, ain’t you a party,” Daryl tells him, watching closely as Rick lets go of the doorframe and steps out, loses his balance and half falls, half drops himself down to the wood floor. He collapses there on the other side in a heap, and Daryl can see his eyes and his throat through the railings, but not his mouth, not unless he turns this way and that to examine the shit-faced grin all spread over Rick’s face.

“There’s a guy,” Rick says, slurred and whispery, “wanted to fuck me, but told ‘im no. Said…” Rick sighs and closes his eyes, thumps his hands out to his sides, “got a boy waitin’ for me.”

“Hope you weren’t talking about me.”

Rick snorts. “‘Course I was. I’m nothing but _hope_.” Rick rolls onto his side and laughs as he studies Daryl through the bars. Daryl tilts his head to meet his eyes, pouring himself through the railings and straight up into those pools, deeper than the Atlantic ocean. “Because you, _you are so goddamn pretty_.”

“Alright,” Daryl says with a roll of his eyes. He smacks his hands onto either side of his chair and uses them to rise, walks over to the railing. “Get your ass up, fucker. You’re going to bed.”

“Bed?” Rick asks hopefully.

“ _Sleep_ ,” Daryl clarifies with a growl.

“Fuck.” Rick smacks his head down against the wood. “Could sleep right here. Fine by me.”

“No way, Jose,” Daryl says and with a powerful leap, clears the railing in one smooth jump until he’s on Rick’s side, his feet planted right next to his head. He knows very well what he should do. He should leave Rick here, let his ass get cold in the night air, let him learn a damn lesson for once. But even despite the logic knocking around in his mind, Daryl still groans, “Upsy daisy, motherfucker” and leans forward toward Rick. With a swoop and a pull, he has Rick’s shoulders in his hands and he’s tugging upwards until the man sits and then stands. Rick grimaces, but falls against Daryl’s body, swaying like a dandelion in the breeze and Daryl grabs hold of him, tries hard not to think about things like heat currents and symmetry, gravity and tectonic plates.

He gets Rick inside. Barely, but they stumble through the door and Daryl switches on the light so he can walk Rick safely to the bed, collapse him down on top of it. Rick starts stretching the moment he hits the comforter, arms and legs going sideways and out, muscles pulling in the very definition of their workloads. “Come here,” Rick whispers. “Kiss me.”

“Nah,” Daryl says, but sits down on the bed next to him anyway. “You don’t want your first queer romp to be when you’re piss-ass drunk.” He pokes Rick’s nose, grins and pushes it and Rick’s head to the side. “Won’t remember it in the morning.”

“Don’t care,” Rick huffs. “Tired of waiting.”

“Could find another boy.”

“Don’t want no other boy.”

“Why?”

Rick sighs and reaches his hand to Daryl, lands it on his arm with a rather satisfying thump. He digs his nails in--eagle talons, indeed--and pulls himself up, sits across from Daryl, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-mouth. His eyelashes are alight, larger it seems in the shadows cast by the lamp. They frame his eyes expertly, soft colored and perfectly spaced, drawing Daryl’s gaze into Rick’s like a landing strip draws a plane. “Why do I like you? _Shit_ ,” he whispers, licking his lips.

“Not how you want to fuck me,” Daryl clarifies. “Why you like me.”

“Because,” Rick says, his voice still slurred and whispered, “you...I’ve dreamt of someone like you. Rough mouth and hard working hands.” He breathes out a laugh, quick and nearly silent into the air. “And you could…” He pauses and lifts his fingers, touches the edge of Daryl’s cheek. His eyes start blinking, the lashes coming together and falling apart and his gaze is so... _raw_. There’s no other word for it. “You could see me,” Rick sighs, dropping his head and his gaze down, hand still light as rain on Daryl’s skin. “You don’t. Not yet. I can’t make you, but you could. Fuck, you could understand me, I know you could.”

“Rick,” Daryl tries, already knowing his voice is too laced with pity, too _this isn’t what this is_. He takes Rick’s hand from his cheek, removes it and drops it on the bed next to him. “Look...I can’t be that, okay?” he tells him, even though it’s needles licking into his skin. “So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to bed. Sleep this off. And in the morning, you’ll wake up feeling better and if you gotta go fuck a man, you go fuck a man. And then you pack your things, go back to Georgia. Go back home.”

“ _Home_ ,” Rick hisses and jerks himself away from Daryl, half-turns to the wall, “there’s nothing for me in _fucking Georgia._ ”

“Yeah, there is. There’s your son--”

“Oh, stop it. _Stop it_ ,” Rick cries. “Don’t be like them. I can’t _take_ it anymore. Is that what I have to do? Live my whole life on a goddamn fucking old expectation of what a man’s _supposed to be_? I’m unhappy. Fuck, I’m so unhappy there. And Carl...he can feel it. Kids know. _Georgia_. _Home_. I don’t have a home. All I have is a broken foundation of one and a small community that watches me like I’m a rabid dog needing to be put down. I’m _sick_ of it. I won’t _have_ it. It’s gotta be better. Daryl? Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it have to be better?”

Rick is looking at him now, wide and _begging_ , nerves practically shaking out of his skin. Daryl wants to tell him so. Wants so desperately to say _yeah, it’ll be different_. This time for sure. But it won’t be. Fucking shit, it won’t be. And they both know it. And being together--falling into each other just to forget for a couple goddamn seconds--isn’t going to do anyone any good in the light of dawn.

So Daryl does the right thing. The _responsible_ thing. He talks Rick down in meaningless little hushed phrases until Rick is too tired to fight and when his eyes get heavy, he dumps him into bed, throws the blanket over him and wishes him a good evening, an end to all his sorrows. It’s a lie like everything else, a pit of despair darker than any night, but it’s all he’s got to give. It’s all either of them have.


	11. Make a Call (And Lay Down)

Daryl wakes up alone in his bed and is both extremely satisfied and unfathomably grumpy for it. His covers are cold, ice on his legs, and the room mocks him--reflecting back the smallness of the walls, the fabricated tinge of the colors slapped upon their surfaces. It’s been a long, long while since he’s been outside, beyond the bounds of sidewalks and concrete, deep away to the freedom of the pine woods, the thick and heavy southern air. He misses it. Misses the feeling of no expectations, no one to judge, no one to watch.

But even out there, it’s lonely. The trees don’t answer when you talk, the brush doesn’t touch you with a warm, lover’s caress. And even the sun, how brilliant and beautiful it can be, can’t compare to looking into another human’s eyes, being present and seen, and irrevocably adored. Not that Daryl’s ever known that. It’s just a fantasy, wisps of musings in his heart that melt away like fog in the dawn.

As he stirs from grogginess, his thoughts get harder, lose their soft and hopeful edges, dispersing down into something clean, clinical and cut. Love is a dream. Nothing more. Dixons don’t get fantasy endings, don’t arrive at that beautiful place of _happy_. And he is a fool to think so.

He sits up in bed, groans as he runs a hand over his stubble, badly needing a shave. He’s just about to put his feet on the ground, stand and walk to the balcony for a cigarette and a start to the day, when he hears it. The low murmuring of electronic voices, a T.V. slicing through the stillness of the hotel morning.

“The $225,000 bungalow checks off all of Maria’s list--a newly furnished kitchen with granite countertops, hardwood floors…”

Daryl frowns, turns to the side to figure out where the sound is coming from, but oh yes. It’s coming from right behind his headboard, right through the wall between him and Rick. “...and most importantly, a large, spacious room with natural light that can be used as a studio.”

Fuck, is that...Daryl frowns hard and grabs the hotel phone, smashing the keys for Rick’s room. He can actually _hear_ the ringing from the other side and then, right into his ear, the low sensational murmur of Rick’s southern drawl, “Hello?”

“Is that fucking HGTV?” Daryl asks and after a pause in which Rick centers himself, there’s laughter.

“Are you _judging_ me for watching _House Hunters_?” Rick responds with a beautiful rippling chuckle to his words, soft and morning light. “This couple’s gonna buy this fucking townhouse, I know they are. Even though the HOA is a nightmare.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Daryl groans. “I thought you were a _man_ , not a housewife.”

Rick snorts. “Lori got me in on it. Hey, turn on channel thirty-nine. You’ve gotta see this ugly-ass blue they’re calling ‘robin’s egg.’”

Daryl rolls his eyes, but his fingers still hunt for the remote on his nightstand until he finds it, using his thumb and ring finger to hold the thing in place while his index finger jabs power. He flips to thirty-nine and while his brain tells him _do not agree with anything Rick says_ , his mouth goes, “Fuck! That’s a ugly skank of a house.”

Rick laughs, his voice filtering in through the phone in electronic reverberations. “She _likes_ it, that painter chick. Fucking has no taste, I swear to God.”

“Shit, look at that _yard_ , man. Nothin’ but fucking fake turf grass.”

“I know!” Rick groans, “And you know what they said? ‘The yard work is too much.’ Bitch, I could take the HOA fee you’re paying on that other _dumb-as-fuck dollhouse_ and mow your damn turf grass ten times over. God _damn_.”

Rick falls silent as the T.V. starts panning and summing up the houses, prices, and amenities, clearly getting close to the climax of _choice_. The announcer in his carefully neutral tone introduces the couple again and they smile at the camera all fake plastic bullshit and announce...townhouse. Daryl can hear Rick’s scream through both the phone and the wall.

Daryl snorts. “I didn’t know _House Hunters_ was a spectator sport.”

“Stick is up your ass, Dixon,” Rick growls and then pauses. “Hey, this is a marathon. Get your ass over here before the next one starts.”

And there it is. Daryl’s _own_ moment of choice. But Rick’s voice in his ear is fucking _addictive_ and he wants to know more than anything in this broken shit of a world what Rick’s face looks like all boiled up in anger at the T.V., his gesturing hands, the cut of his eyes as they roll in exasperation. So Daryl scoots out of bed, barely even bothering to toss a shirt on with his worn pajama pants, and walks barefoot to the door of his hotel room and then into Rick’s, who’s got out of bed only to open the door before walking back and sliding into the covers again. He leaves the tip of them open, thrown over in invitation and Daryl is really a stupid bitch for taking him up on the offer, but he does, throwing himself into the king bed with abandon and turning his eyes to the new couple looking for a place in Tampa, all bright eyes and expensive tastes.

“I swear to God if there’s an HOA fee…” Rick starts, his eyes glued in front of him. Which is good. _Damn_ good, because with a little tip of his head, Daryl doesn’t know if he’ll be able to make it, to resist the gravity of Rick’s skin, his mouth as it pulls apart in want, his eyes like wild, unexpected floods.

But Rick doesn’t turn. Instead he sits there, propped up in bed, and rolls the volume on the T.V. higher, tugs the covers up a bit on his chest. The episode plows forward, going through the list of what the husband wants-- _easy to clean, easy to repair_ \--and what the wife wants-- _good flowerbed potential, lots of open space and light, two guestrooms_. “Guestrooms,” Rick grumbles. “So what if you’ve got two kids coming home for Christmas? Make one sleep on the _couch_ , like us normal people.”

Daryl snorts and shifts, his elbow taking his weight as he leans on it, body tipped slightly toward Rick. Underneath the covers he wiggles his toes, catalogues the distance from his ankles to Rick’s, crossed under the covers and more than likely toasty warm.

The first house is a mess. It’s an apartment, really, and sure enough--HOA fee. The only flowerbeds to speak of are on window ledges and the place is cramped and unattractive, but with a great view of Tampa. The husband is overjoyed--the majority of repairs fit into HOA and the place doesn’t have a spit of carpet in the whole joint--but the Mrs. is firmly unhappy with the one guestroom and the lack of soil.

So elsewhere they go. The second house isn’t bad and Rick even grunts his approval. It’s small, too, but with two guestrooms and a tiny but useable backyard. It’s out in a different suburb than the couple would prefer, so quite a commute for them and, in the wife’s eyes, it needs a modern refurbishing. But the husband accepts it as a possibility and they move on.

Rick digs further down in his covers, propping his knees up and keeping his head only just in visible range of the T.V. He yawns at the third house--big and bright and chic and beautiful and about $50k over budget. “Bitches gonna buy it,” Daryl comments and Rick just groans an affirmative. And sure thing-- _they’ll make it work_ , husband says. Daryl rolls his eyes. “This show is jacked,” he feels the need to tell Rick, but that doesn’t stop them from watching another one and then another one.

At some point in time, Rick reaches for the hotel phone and dials room service, orders two lunch plates since they’ve missed the breakfast ones by about two hours. Daryl puts up a good fight for paying his half, but Rick expertly shoos him off, tells him that it’s his room and it was him that made the call. The room service comes, burgers and some damn good pickles, and Daryl snarfs it down right in bed with Rick, their fingers flying over the same pile of fries in between them.

Neither of them get up to put on appropriate clothes or even move to the rather fluffy armchairs blocking in Rick’s bed. Because the covers are nice and the day is long outside, horrid and undeniable, and even though the inflation of house prices is making Daryl nearly scream with rage-- _$300k?!? For a fucking APARTMENT?_ \--it’s kind of nice to sit with Rick, kind of _domestic_ and goddamn sinfully unreal, like they are their own little bubble in a world full of shit and despair.

An episode ends and another one starts. This one has three houses that vary mostly by location: the first in the middle of everything--smack dab downtown, the second at the edge of a residential area and the woods, and the third off far away, a little cabin ten miles from nothing. Daryl grunts and gestures to the T.V. while the announcer is talking about tile vs. hardwood, “Which one you want?”

“What?” Rick asks with a grunt, rubbing a hand over his chin, the scrape of stubble sending electric currents vibing through Daryl like he’s wire.

“If you was buyin’...fuck, okay, let’s say _we’re_ buying. Me and you. No fuckin’ HOA fees and we just robbed a really damn big bank, so money’s no problem.”

Rick snorts. “You want _me_ , a _cop_ , to fantasize about robbing a bank?”

Daryl rolls his eyes and gestures to the T.V. again. “An _evil_ bank. We were fucking modern Robin Hood. Now. Which one.”

Rick tilts his head and stares at the screen, his eyes going thin in concentration. “Don’t take you for a granite man.”

“Ah, fuck counters. If you can gut a fish on ‘em, I don’t give a shit.”

Rick laughs. “And I guess you don’t care about paying extra for hardwood?” Daryl grunts in response, so Rick continues. “I wouldn’t put you in the middle of the city, so the first one is completely out. The second one’s a little ugly on the outside, but you could paint that easy. Nice yard, too. With it leading into the wood and everything. Creek right there. But houses on the other side, too, so you have a neighborhood. The last one...I don’t know. Kind of rustic. I mean, that’s fine, sure, but…” He slides his eyes over to Daryl, having to tilt them downward to catch his gaze. “Doesn’t look like you.”

“Don’t look like me?” Daryl asks, keeping his face perfectly neutral, squared away, all secrets locked. He stares up at Rick from his position returned to his elbow, hands fidgeting with the sheet and each other. Rick, propped up and studying, hums deep in his throat.

“Figure you’re pretty familiar with cabin shit like that. Also figure you don’t want to go back to it.”

Daryl blinks, trying to soften the surprise that threatens to fall over his face. “Why you think that?” he asks, trying not to let Rick onto how right he is.

“Seem like the outdoors type,” Rick answers. “Balcony and all that. You’re fucking tight with money and you act like you wanna gut me when I offer to pay, so I’m guess you didn’t grow up rich. With it being Georgia...probably cabin or trailer. And I just don’t see you in a trailer. You’re too independent for that.”

Daryl shrugs with a little grunt and stares at his hands, the callouses on them from hard work. “Daddy liked his peace,” Daryl says in rough, wispy tones. “Didn’t like no one messing around with what was his.”

“Didn’t make _you_ happy, though.”

“...nah,” Daryl says with a sigh. “Didn’t. How’d you know that?”

Rick snorts. “Nothing made you happy. Nothing _before_. You hate the goddamn south, remember? Ain’t nothing too much more south than a fucking cabin in the woods.”

Daryl smiles slowly and sits up, rolls his body to mirror Rick’s where it’s propped on the headboard. “So not three?”

“Hell no,” Rick tells him. “Two. We’ll paint that fucker. Commute into town. Take the wooded trails when we want. And I don’t give a _shit_ that the motherfucking _fireplace_ is real wood instead of electric. Hell, we might need it in Maine. Or Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, South Dakota, wherever we end up.”

“We’re buying north?” Daryl asks, a hopeful rise to his voice even though this is _pretend_ , a goddamn fantasy conversation over fucking HGTV.

“We’re buying north,” Rick confirms, twisting his eyes to Daryl again and latching on like symbiosis. Rick bites his lip and keeps staring, keeps throwing out question after question with the dilation of his pupils, the twitches of his eyelashes, the soft pop of his lip when he frees it from his teeth. He leans forward slowly and Daryl, stuck like a bull in mud, doesn’t move. “ _Please_ ,” Rick whispers, reaching forward and placing his hand so delicately on Daryl’s neck, setting up forest fires in the prick of his knuckles on Daryl’s skin.

“Please what?” Daryl whispers and finds his own voice caught and breathless, his own eyes wide open and _anticipating_.

“Please,” Rick says again and comes forward, nearly brushes their lips together, “don’t make me go back to the club tonight.”

Daryl blinks, his eyes for a split second clearing the view in front of him and the words crash in upon him like rolling boulders. The _club_. Fuck. That’s where Rick is supposed to be. _That’s_ what’s supposed to happen, not fantasies of lime-green houses with bay windows and walk-in closets in damn near every room.

“Rick--” Daryl starts, pulling away, but gets cut off by the desperate moan.

“ _Please_.”

But Rick isn’t panting for him. He’s panting for _someone_ and he just hasn’t clued in yet that there are so many better people than Daryl, so many _opportunities_ for a guy like Rick, when Daryl is dumb, dead weight. And Daryl can’t bear to stand around and listen to it, hear the frenzy and foolhardiness of Rick’s words, leaking out honey-smooth like he _believes_ Daryl is a catch, _believes_ he wants him.

So Daryl stands. Pulls himself out of the covers and turns to leave, snapping his bare heels across the carpet.

“I’m not waiting for you!” Rick calls after him. “I’m going and I swear to God, I’ll find someone.”

Daryl grunts in response and walks toward the door, opens it and steps in the hall, closes it with a clack. And he swears, even though his mind tells him it can’t possibly be the truth, that he hears Rick’s voice through the wood, ringing clear like Sunday church bells-- _even if the one I want is you_.


	12. Watch the Waves (And Go For It)

Daryl goes to the beach, although “beach” is a loose word for the meeting of dry land and the sea where Mississippi is concerned. The water is mud today, blue with a brown tinge and quietly lapping at the sand stuck through with twigs and leaves. At the edges, little crabs bury to and fro between the grains and sanderlings skitter past with their beaks down, pecking at the incoming surf.

He doesn’t want to be near Rick. Of that, he is sure. It’s the middle of the day and fucking _hot_ out here in the blazing death of summer, but it’s better than there--the air conditioner grinding out its joy, the blanket smooth on his legs, and Rick’s eyes, his eyes eyes _eyes_ on Daryl, asking him for something that will never work out between them.

So Daryl’s gonna sit here. Gonna plant his ass right here in the sand and wait for the sun to slip from afternoon to evening to gone, wait for Rick to put on his party boots, to drag his ass downtown, to enter that sleazy fucked-up bar and find a sleazy fucked-up man and thrust his brains out to the tune of desperate, writhing cocks that wither in the morning. It’s fitting, really. That that will be his first. After all, it’s what the gay community _is_ here--it’s a goddamn _type_ \--and if Rick’s set his mind on getting his rocks off to ballsacks, he might as well get used to the idea that they don't stick around.

Daryl huffs unhappily and glowers at a passing family looking way too fucking happy for the fucking deep south. He lets his mind go blank, or tries to, focusing all his intent on the gulls calling overhead, the smooth swish of pelicans over the water. Behind him, a squirrel shoots up a palm tree, being chased unhappily by a crow, and Daryl begins to contemplate that--palm squirrels versus oak squirrels, American crows versus fish crows. It’s all the same really. All nature and instinct, what you are and what you are not. Just like what he is and what he’s not. What Rick is and what…

Goddamnit, Daryl needs to get Rick out of his head. Just for these, what? Three more hours until sunset. Five more until he’s probably good and fucked. And then it won’t matter. Rick’s eyes will be opened to more than just the cock next door to him and he’ll smile with a loose twist to his hips, pack up his button shirts and charcoal colored jeans and head to the exit, slam his hotel key down in front of Glenn and there. Goodbye. Farewell. Done.

And what will Daryl do? Frown through it, but his heart will keep beating. And once Rick is gone, maybe he’ll get some rest, some _recovery_ before his credit card maxes out and he’s on the streets, begging for odd jobs around motherfucking Biloxi, MS. But hey, that’s all fine, too. At least it’s not Georgia. At the very goddamn least.

Daryl stays on the beach until late, really pushes what he’s so fucking stubborn to do. Families start giving him long eyes, fathers placing their bodies in between him and their children, mothers reaching for hands and holding tight. But he’s nothing to worry about--just a fucking rock-bottom redneck with nothing to offer the world. Nothing to see, really. Nothing at all special.

The sun threatens the horizon when his phone rings. He checks it on instinct and, unsurprisingly, it’s Martinez. Daryl stares at the number, at the vibrating piece of metal and plastic in his hand and maybe it’s desperation or loneliness or hell, even good old fucking nostalgia that causes him to slide his thumb across the answer button, but whatever it is, it prompts Martinez to sigh in weeks-old relief when Daryl grunts, “Hello?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Martinez breathes and there’s the loud sound of his ass hitting a chair. “Pretty much gave up on getting you.”

“Hmm,” Daryl mumbles, the frown on his face digging rivers into his mouth.

“Look, Daryl, man, I am _so_ _sorry_. Jesus. You know that right? Fucking Philip, man. I threw him out of the club. Swear to _God_. What a _dick_.”

“Yeah,” Daryl snips, “thanks.”

Martinez pauses and waits for Daryl to add to that, but when it’s clear he isn’t going to, he exhales a long breath. “Are you...you okay? Know you’re out of town. Even went by your damn place and found it all dark and abandoned. Do you...I mean, are you fine?”

“Lost my job,” Daryl reminds him. “And you were being a real toolbag, so I figured I didn’t have anything to stick around for.”

Even through the phone, Daryl can feel the grimace. “Sorry. ‘Bout that. About all of it. The people here are real douches.”

“Yeah, well you ain’t sunshine and roses yourself.”

Martinez hesitates and the static of the phone lies there between them, a gulf wider than the water out before him. “I fucked up,” Martinez whispers. “When it comes to you.”

“Yeah,” Daryl snaps. “You did.”

“Look, I...I just want to know you’re okay. Alright? Just give me that. I know I was never what you were looking for, never what you wanted. But...I just want to know that you’re going to be fine.”

“I will be,” Daryl tells him and then before he can stop himself, “Hell, I even got someone else.”

Martinez clears his throat and then says very carefully, “You do?”

Daryl lets a big, heaping breath out through his nose. “No,” he admits. “Could, though. Fucker likes me too much.”

Martinez snorts. “Don’t know what that’s like.”

“Stop it,” Daryl says with a chuckle and it’s almost, _almost_ like old times. “Fuck, man. What happened to us? Why couldn’t we ever get it off the ground?”

“The truth?”

“Yeah. You owe me, don’t you? Truth would be a good place to start.”

“I’m a coward.” Daryl blinks, but Martinez, unable to see his expression, continues on. “There were a lot of things you needed and I never wanted to give them to you. Like leavin’. Let’s be real, Daryl. _Real_ real. You losing your job...that was just an excuse. You’ve been gunning for the town limits ever since I’ve known you and _damn_ have I known you for a long time.”

Daryl sets his jaw hard and digs his toes into the sand. By now, he is one of the few left on the beach, the arc of night crawling over the land in long, fearful tendrils. In the back of his mind, a countdown keeps ticking-- _Is he dressed? Has he left? Has he arrived?_

“And me,” Martinez says, still going, “I could never leave. Georgia is my home. My kids are here. My family is here. And sure, maybe that’s all just a damn excuse, but...but this is who I am. And it’s not who you are. So one of us was always going to be unhappy.”

“So why’d you fuck me, then? The first time.”

“...why did you?”

Daryl groans. “Don’t give me that.”

“Hey, I’m being _serious_ ,” Martinez counters. “We both knew the score. So why’d you go with me?”

“Because I could forget about my shitty life,” Daryl tells him, “if only for a minute.”

“Still pretty shitty where you’re at?”

Daryl sighs. “I’m in fucking Mississippi. It’s shittier.”

Martinez snorts out a chuckle. “Look, baby...if you come back, I’ll build you a fucking _castle_ , okay? And I’ll decorate the spires with Philip’s head on a pike, I can promise you that. But...well, but I know you’re not coming back. And honestly, as your _friend_...as a guy that _cares_ about you, don’t. Okay? You’re fucking better than all of us and I don’t want to see you sit on a barstool and drink your life away. Alright? So shit. Tell me about Mississippi. Tell me about this guy.”

“It’s so fucking _dumb_.”

“That doesn’t sound to me like you talking, so talk. What’s his name? Brunette? You like brunettes.”

“Fuck you,” Daryl growls, but there’s no heat to it. “His name’s Rick and he’s a cop--”

“--kinky--”

“--shut up. He’s a nice guy. Divorced. Don’t you open your goddamn mouth, Martinez, I swear to God.” Daryl takes a deep breath and pushes forward. “He’s cute. _Too_ cute, you know? And fucking naive. A _new gay_. Thinks the world is built for him, you know? But he seems a little stuck on me, I guess. He’s here for a week. This is day…” Daryl thinks. “...five. He wants to get his rocks off before he goes home to Georgia. Pop his gay-V. He’s, uh...been waiting for me. But tonight he’s going to go to this club--it’s fucking called _Pecker Joe’s_ , Martinez, _goddamn_ \--and pick a guy. Take him home. He can, too. He’s hot as hell. Could get anyone.”

“Wait,” Martinez says once Daryl’s story is finished, “you’re going to _let him_.”

Daryl blinks. “Don’t want to lead him on.”

“For what? Sex? Dude, if he’s as hot as you’re saying, I’m sure you won’t have performance problems.”

“You’re as ass. No. I don’t...fuck. _Fine_ , okay? Be a dick about it. I don’t want to lead _me_ on.”

“You like him, huh?”

“No shit.”

“Does he like you?”

“No.”

Martinez sighs. “New question. Does he _say_ he likes you?”

“Boys say shit all the time so they can hold your dick.”

“God _dammit_ , Daryl, you’re still a stubborn, stupid son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

Daryl grumbles. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let me be real clear on this, okay?” Martinez says and Daryl hears the squeak of his chair as he sits forward. He can imagine it--the hard pools of Martinez’ eyes, his gesturing hands, his _you’re going to listen to me_ attitude. “You like him. He likes you. Stop _complicating_ shit and go fuck him before some asshole fucks him first.”

“But--”

“No buts. Buts are for the morning and when he goes back to Georgia. But let me ask you one question, Daryl. One _very_ important question.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Daryl growls. “Ask me your pussy question.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“...what?”

“What if he doesn’t? Go back to Georgia? What if he _stays_? For _you_.”

“Ain’t gonna--”

“But what if he does? For real. I’m being serious, man. Do you want to be the same guy you were here? Is that what you want your life to be? Or do you want to grab the bull by the balls and see what happens?”

Daryl opens his mouth to tell Martinez off, to explain just how _wrong_ he is and how every fucknugget word out of his mouth is goddamn inaccurate, but the truth of it is...it isn’t. It _isn’t_ wrong, _isn’t_ so far off the mark to be laughable. Because that chance, that small, little miniscule, impossibly hard to believe in chance that Daryl could wake up tangled in Rick in the morning, watch his smile new and breaking like the dawn, all light and unbridled happiness beaming at Daryl...isn’t that worth it? Isn’t that worth the biggest risk of his life?

And so Daryl, heart-thumping, drops the phone into his lap, and hits end on it quicker than Martinez’ voice can filter through the speaker. Because suddenly he knows. Knows with the fiber of his shaking soul what he’s going to do. He’s going to go after Rick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's going to happen?!? Will he get there in time?!? Will Rick still be interested?!? How evil am I?!? :D


	13. Find Him (And Destroy Yourself in Him)

It takes Daryl absolutely no time to make it to _Pecker Joe’s_. His soles carry him forward, across the sidewalk wet with the heat of the southern summer, the streetlights popping on one by one the closer he gets to downtown. In fact, he’s practically flying--somewhere between thighs burning with the effort of legs extending in walk and the pushed up nature of his heels trying to jog.

He is, quite suddenly and irrevocably, _desperate_ for Rick--desperate for the feel of his knuckles caught and dragging in the waves of Rick’s hair, for the knock of their hips together, the delicious slide of wet mouths that have been licked open. He needs to be there, needs to grab Rick, take him and then _take him_ and fuck fucking _Pecker Joe’s._ Ain’t no reason for Rick to pick up a skank at the bar, fall for any goddamn sweet-talking one-liner and stumble to the bathroom, occupied sign down, Rick’s ass up.

No. No fuck that. All of that. Daryl’s on a goddamn _mission_.

So why does he stop outside when he gets to the bar, feet suddenly too pussy to cross the threshold? He grunts to himself and back-pedals, ends up at the edge of the building and the alley, cigarette pulled from his pocket and in his lips. Fuck, he should put it back in its box, unlit, stomp through that damn door with purpose. But here he is. Lighting it.

He sucks smoke into his lungs and sighs around the cigarette. He just needs a moment. Just a little courage. He tries, as if to pacify himself, to count the amount of men he’s kissed, stuck his tongue down in passionate frenzy. That’s a long line. A damn fucking _long_ line. But even all of them combined, all rolled up into one stamp like a tattoo across his mind-- _experience_ \--don’t mean nothin’ compared to Rick. Because Rick is...well, there’s no other word for it. Rick is goddamn special. Just like he said. And Daryl’s an idiot for not seeing it before.

Still does nothing to make his toes calm down from where they’re twitching in his boots, though. Because Dixons don’t have _experience_ with _special_ things and Daryl definitely doesn’t know where this dark and cryptic tunnel is gonna lead him. But Martinez is right, fuck him. Daryl has to _try_ , has to be a different man. So he throws down the cigarette even though it’s only half done, smashing it into the stone at his feet with the tip of his boot and turns--square shoulders and jaw--and steps into the shitty-ass gay bar.

The atmosphere is dim and low, unsurprisingly hidden, and everything reeks of shame and perversion. Typical, Daryl thinks to himself, men grabbing cocks in the dark. He finds Rick without too much worry, his laugh and wide, unabashed stance shining like rainbow colored oil in creek water. He’s talking with another man--big, buff, black--but Daryl doesn’t pay that no mind. Rick is his and even the damn air seems to know it, tighter here in expectation than it was outside.

Daryl slides through the crowd, bumping shoulders when he has to and growling at anyone who looks at him twice. Rick is leaning against the bar, the other man sitting next to him, perched only slightly on a barstool, ready to jump, ready to _go_.

As Daryl approaches, the man speaks to Rick, a big genuine smile on his face and Daryl doesn’t think he looks like a bad guy, just the wrong guy at the wrong time because Rick and Daryl sing in tune for each other like the tick of the second hand with the minute. Rick laughs, his voice a high, crystal chuckle--fake as _shit_ and flirty, but Daryl doesn’t let that stop him. “Rick,” he says, his voice barely above the din.

Rick pauses, his face wiped clean of any expression. He turns his gaze, locks eyes and Daryl sways in place like a rattler, hissing and coiled, prepared to defend.

“Well,” Rick says with a quirk of his mouth, “if it isn’t Daryl Dixon. Mr. Dixon, allow me to introduce my friend here…” Rick puts his hand on the man’s shoulder, squeezes. “Tyreese. Doesn’t he look like a football player? He keeps lying to me and telling me he isn’t.”

Tyreese chuckles. “Wasn’t even one in high school.”

But Daryl’s not buying it, not giving Rick a second of leeway. He shifts on the balls of his feet--light and agile and dangerous and says again, “Rick.”

Rick sighs and surrenders Tyreese’s shoulder, his eyebrow going up in a delicate arch. “Daryl,” he says with the full power of his southern rumble, all flirtation and breathy _come hither_ tone dissolved. Daryl knows it for what it is--an ultimatum. Now or never. Now or get the fuck gone. But he’s resolved--fucking steel through and through, his veins set on fire with determination and _will_.

So he lifts his hand, palm up, and waits for Rick to take it. Rick does with only the tiniest twitch of his eyes and turns his head, speaks quickly to Tyreese. “Wait for me? If I’m not back in ten...was nice meeting you.”

And then Daryl has him. He rips through the crowd like Moses parting the sea, letting it bend under the pressures of a higher conviction. Behind him, Rick stumbles along, nearly jogging with the force of Daryl’s pull, but he allows Daryl, _accepts_ Daryl in the volition of his decree.

They break outside into the air heavy with humidity, the crackling of summer flame, and Daryl tugs Rick until he is away from the door, away from the flourish font, until there is nothing next to them but the bricks--old and creased with other backs that have hit them, other bodies pressed together. But it is not other bodies. Not tonight. It is _their_ bodies and Daryl slides himself on Rick like a cottonmouth through still, muddy waters. “Do you think,” he whispers into Rick’s personal space, his hand already on Rick’s burning, heated skin, “that you would want to be mine?”

“Don’t you think,” Rick counters with the click of his tongue, the light in his eyes reflecting the streetlamps and the passing headlights on the street, “that I already am?”

Daryl grunts in acknowledgement and gathers his energy, pours all of his tangled web of devotion and fear into a forward momentum and he pushes in. Their hips touch first, the slices of their groins in angles locking in, and then their chests, flat planes together. The bump of their noses, the sigh as Rick lifts his mouth and waits, the second of pause, cool and quiet like the wait before the storm. And then, with crackling, _alive_ spirit, with soft, perpetual beginnings like the tip of Rick’s covers, open for him, Daryl touches himself to Rick.

The kiss is nothing at first--dry lips against dry lips, but oh, when Daryl moves, when he melts like a stinging, sharp sword giving up the ghost into molten desire, then it becomes something real. And, perplexingly, something unreal. Something that doesn’t happen in the deep south or, fuck, anywhere in this godforsaken world. It becomes _them_ and there is no other way to describe it.

Rick’s mouth is hot and wanton, his lips sealed against Daryl’s in something quite like a desperate prayer. His hands are on Daryl--first his fingers digging into Daryl’s hips and then one hand sliding forward, moving up his spine to his neck, tangling in the hair he finds there. Daryl turns them, tips them so Rick’s tongue meets his at an angle he never knew two men could find. And more than turn their mouths, Daryl turns their bodies until _he_ is the one with his back to the brick and Rick is there, pressed against him hard and sensual, his teeth, his lips, his soul bare and growling like the fires of the Earth between them.

They kiss. And they touch. And they weave themselves together like simple, laid out string and Daryl, under the ministrations of Rick’s hands, the simple movement of his lips, relaxes down into something he never thought possible--a pool of pure, unfiltered joy. Against Rick’s lips, he realizes he is smiling, senses the happiness written into the lines of his body and Rick laughs into his mouth, tilts his head to come back in for another breathless, hallowed sensation when Daryl hears the loud _crack_ , followed by the screech of tires, and--his eyes flying open in dread, sees the bright cardinal color of spilled blood.


	14. Panic (And Love)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longish chapter on a Wednesday! Hopefully this makes up for the cliffhanger in the last one. :D I hope you guys enjoy! Let me know what you think about it! 
> 
> We will resume on Friday, as per the regular schedule. Which is the last chapter! Yikes! It's coming to an end! I also want to take a moment just to say thank you to all the lovely comments I've been getting! I know this story is a lot more dense and grittier than stuff I normally write and it really helps to hear that I'm getting the tone for Daryl and for the south right! Thanks so much, guys!

The world filters back in. Rick, in front of Daryl, has fallen to a kneeling position, clutching the back of his head and behind him, rolling innocently and with a good chunk missing, lies the bottle thrown from a car window, coupled with the venomous _fags_. The car is long gone and pieces of broken glass remain tucked in Rick’s hair, but luckily he is alive, awake, and groaning.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses and Daryl reaches down for him, pulls him to his feet and starts shoving Rick around so he can see. Rick resists, hissing out in pain when Daryl’s fingers touch the spot where blood is trickling.

“ _Goddammit_ ,” Daryl growls as his fingers feel for how deep the wound is, how serious. “I fucking _knew_ I should have taken you to the hotel. Shit. I am _so stupid_.”

“UNN,” Rick groans in pain, but then hisses a breath through his teeth. “Stop it. Not your fault. Fuck, that _hurts_. Don’t poke it like that. Did you see a license plate?”

“Shit, man, I didn’t even see a _make_ ,” Daryl growls and that’s not the only thing he can’t see. The poor downtown light is doing nothing to help Daryl figure out the intricacies of the cut on the back of Rick’s head, but Rick doesn’t seem to mind if he has a roaring gash that might need stitches tonight.

“We should call the authorities.”

Daryl huffs and pulls out the rag he always carries in his back-pocket. He pushes it up onto Rick’s head and guides Rick’s hand so that he can hold it there with pressure. Red for red, Daryl thinks. God _damn_. “Authorities, my _ass_. Look, maybe you and your partner were nice good ol’ boys, but I can bet you the beat walking the streets of fucking _Mississippi_ ain’t too kind to queers who got knocked around. Now, you dizzy? Balance okay?”

“Daryl--”

“Fuckin’ shut up and answer me.”

“I’m _fine_.”

“I’m taking that to mean you can walk. Come on.” Daryl points down the street. “Walgreens two blocks from here. Let’s go. That blood ain’t slowin’, I’m telling you.”

And with that, Daryl is manhandling Rick down the street, who, other than a few winces and a rag-covered hand clamped into his curls, looks no worse for the wear. But Daryl’s not gonna breathe until he can see for himself, until it’s all nice and bandaged up and not leaking like a faucet. He focuses on the steps Rick is making, on rushing him along as quickly as he can go without _pushing_ , and keeping an eye out to the road for any suspicious looking vehicles swingin’ around the block.

If he does that--keeps his eyes on the cracked concrete and the fritz of the light they’re passing under--then his mind doesn’t snap so quickly to self blame. Daryl’s been gay for damn over a decade in the south. He should fucking _know better_. And no amount of Rick trying to pacify him is gonna knock that ball right out of his system.

But what’s done is done. And the only way to make it even marginally better is to get Rick under bright lighting, see how many glass knives stuck to his skin like the remora fish to the belly of a shark. So Daryl hustles him that way and opens the door when they get there, shoves him inside until they’ve stumbled into the blazing fluorescence of market value and Daryl can tip Rick, remove his hand and really study him.

The gash isn’t that deep and in fact, by now, the blood has slowed down to digging at the curls that try to hide the cut. And, thankfully, it looks like the glass only scraped Rick and didn’t dig in. There are bits of it, though, attached to his hair and one caught on the collar of his shirt that Daryl brushes away with careful, deft fingers. “Fuckin’ _lucky_ ,” he breathes to Rick and Rick grunts his agreement.

“Feel okay, though,” Rick mutters. “Other than a damn headache.”

Daryl frowns and spins himself around to Rick’s front, studying his pupils, the wrinkles of his eyes in pain, the frown on his face. “Nauseous?” he asks. “How you thinking? Good? Light bothering you?”

Rick snorts. “It’s not a concussion.”

“Could be,” Daryl says, with the power of experience, “never know when those things will sneak up on you.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Rick breathes again with a smile to his face now--the twitches of grimacing subsiding. “Really. Sore like a fucker, but I’m _fine_.”

“Should’a been me,” Daryl grunts and motions at Rick’s body with a wave of his hand. “Should’a kept you against the brick.”

Daryl dips his head and swings it to the side, glares at the 2-for-1 display of candy bars that coat the entrance to the store. Rick gives a soft little scoff, but Daryl doesn’t look up until Rick’s fingers are under his chin, pulling him to the light, and he’s saying quietly, “Well, that’s dumber than a pile of bricks. How could you have known?”

“Because,” Daryl snaps, “shit like this _happens_ here. I told you it did. Lucky it was a fucking _bottle_ and not a--” Daryl cuts himself off with a grind to his jaw and rips his chin from Rick’s hands, goes back to staring at the floor. But Rick, ever the bold, _incredulously foolhardy_ bastard, merely comes forward, tips his chin again and this time soothes him not with words or explanations, but the gentle, resolute press of lips to lips. 

Daryl sighs against him, his body sagging in defeat, but before he gets a chance to fully recover, one of the cashiers calls over to them, “Hey, hey!” Daryl snaps his gaze over and glares. “I’m gonna have to ask you to buy something or leave,” the boy tells him bravely. Daryl stares at him, stone cold and hissing. He’s probably not even twenty yet, barely got three hairs on his chin. But he’s old enough to know the way of things, Daryl guesses. Old enough to know you don’t call ‘em queers on the clock and _no, absolutely not! I didn’t ask them to leave because they were_ gay _._

But fuck that with a spiked up dick, Daryl thinks, and turns to storm through the store. Rick goes back to holding the cloth to his wound, but follows him at a distance as Daryl grabs what he wants and stomps up to the counter--slamming down a bottle of Aleve, a stack of bandages, lube and a big-ass box of condoms.

He raises his eyebrow challengingly at the cashier, who swallows down his embarrassment as much as he can with an apple-red face. But he rings Daryl up. And Daryl pays, trying not to swipe his card so forcefully he breaks the fucking machine. And then, with his bag in his hand and Rick’s palm in the other, he roars his way outside into the muggy, charged air.

Rick, behind him, is snorting. “I think you almost gave him a stroke.”

“ _Good_ ,” Daryl growls. “Fucking _dick_.” He sighs heavily and keeps walking, hand still in Rick’s. “Can we go to the hotel now? Are you goddamn _done_ with fucking _gay bars_ and shit?”

Rick laughs a good natured chuckle. “I was just waiting for you to ask.”

So with a swallow, Daryl takes him home. It’s not like before, from Chili’s to the hotel, tripping over one another with drunken hands and loose, wandering touch. This time is slow, deliberate, like each footstep sparks the beginning of a roaring fire that refuses to die down, that will consume everything in its path once they reach the building, slide into Rick’s room hand-in-hand, a bag of condoms hanging off Daryl’s wrist.

But the finality of it, the permanence of Rick’s boots next to his as they crunch the sidewalk, doesn’t do anything to stop Daryl’s forward momentum. Because now it is more than just movement, more than just the sinew and muscle of his body creating forth energy to consume. It is inertia--an unending force. And even if Daryl threw his whole body weight against it, he couldn’t stop the sublime, effortless pull that keeps him circling around Rick like piranhas in a cage.

So they go to the room. And Rick slides his card in. And Daryl follows him.

It looks the same as it’s always looked--shitty green paint, fake wood accents. But it’s _charged_ now. The rumpled bed before them reminds Daryl of not six hours ago--the hum of _House Hunters_ , the feel of Rick’s body, close and farther than Russia. And the wall reminds him of that first night, Rick’s nails so sharp and embedded, the arch of his body shouting _please, now, yours._

Daryl throws the bag down on the endtable and sighs, fingers the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. “Drink?” he asks, but Rick shakes his head, sitting down on the edge of the mattress.

“Think I’m gonna take an Aleve and lay off the alcohol,” he responds to Daryl as he roots through the bag, grabs the bandages and starts taping up the back of his head. Before Daryl can gather breath, he adds, “ _stop worrying._ ”

Daryl grunts, but concedes. He leans against the wall, but decides that’s stupid, so he ends up in the center of the room, shifting on the balls of his feet. “You’re fine?” he asks. “Goddamn assholes.”

“Yeah,” Rick says, expelling all his breath through his lungs. “I...it’s stupid, right? I mean I knew intellectually that shit like that happens. I just thought...well, I guess this is one of those things you think never happens to you.”

“Pricks,” Daryl growls. “Is what they were. If you’re okay, don’t pay them no mind.”

“That happens everywhere?”

Daryl grunts. “The south.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Rick hisses. “How do you live like that?”

_Poorly_ , is the answer, but Daryl just shrugs instead and doesn’t meet Rick’s eyes.

“This why you want to run north?”

Daryl shrugs again and worries at the inside of his cheek. “I’m not stupid. I know it happens up there, too. Least, though, most people act like it ain’t _supposed_ to happen. Down here, it’s everyone’s badge of honor to fight the fucking system. Like _I’m_ the fucking system.”

“You really want to go north, don’t you?” Rick whispers. “It’s not a fantasy, I mean you really _do_.”

“Can’t,” Daryl snaps like it’s law, tries to keep his voice from breaking. “I...fuck, I’m poor, you know? And alone. And I don’t know how to...fuckers up there probably look down on me. It’s just a stupid dream.”

“Wanting to be somewhere you’re accepted is _never_ stupid,” Rick corrects with a velocity that Daryl can’t help but believe. 

“Don’t know if I’m worth all that,” he says, instead.

“You're worth more,” Rick tells him and then slowly motions over to the bag sitting innocently on the endtable. “You planning on using that?”

Daryl slides his eyes that way, the condoms and lube sitting tight right inside the white plastic covering. He shrugs and takes a step forward, sits down gingerly on the edge of the bed beside Rick. “You ain’t...you ain’t shittin’ me about liking me, are you?”

“No,” Rick says with a snort. “Never.”

“Hmm,” Daryl grunts and raises his thumb to his lip, nips at the skin there. “Then thought about it.”

“Thought about it...how?” Rick asks and then with the slow slide of his body, melts onto Daryl until he’s in his lap, thighs gripping thighs. Daryl swallows down a groan as Rick’s ass comes to rest across his legs and lifts his hands, places them on Rick’s hips--slender and agile.

“Don’t know,” Daryl breathes. “You’re the new queer. You tell me.”

“How I want it?” Rick grins and runs his fingers along Daryl’s jawline and then into his hair. “Want you to show me,” he whispers, his lips and eyes inches from Daryl, but already locked on like sights on a scope. “And I want you to kiss me during. Otherwise...fuck it. Do whatever you goddamn care to.”

And with that, Rick brings his mouth down, closes it on Daryl’s in heady, reckless passion. Daryl groans around it, loud and without filter and their lips come together, their tongues and teeth. It’s bruising, hard and uncensored like the first rumblings of a volcano that’s under too much pressure. It’s exploding, it’s _here_ and it’s _now_ and Daryl has never felt so present with anyone, never poured the texture of another’s skin into himself like copper and tin making bronze.

But he is doing that now. Taking Rick in with his tongue and his hands, sliding his fingers under the bottom of his shirt and just touching the tips to Rick’s naked, heated waist. Rick is breathing at a mile a minute, all shallow and wanton and when they pull away, his eyes are like diamonds retreating into the night--pupils wide and dark in ecstasy.

“I want to fuck you,” Daryl whispers, fingernails making moons on Rick’s side, “and then I want to slide out of you and lay on my back and let you fuck me, see your face as you come in me, as you make _me_ come on _you_.”

Rick takes in a hard breath, sliding it through his lips in a near whistle. His hand dig into Daryl’s hair, pulling and he breathes out _yes_ into the space between their bodies. Daryl slides his arm around Rick’s lower back to hold him and leans forward, tips Rick until just the flex of his muscles holds him in place and then kisses the life out of him, _shows_ him what it’s like to be with a man, to discard all those soft and fragile things on the floor and give themselves over to pure, unadulterated _lust_.

Rick moans around and into his mouth, his hands tangled in Daryl’s hair, holding on for purchase and fervor, and Daryl can’t stand the clothes between them, the harsh and rubbing fabric separating him from Rick’s naked body and how Daryl will lay it out like a god, like the definition of temptation, like the singing chorus of the dawn.

On his lap, Rick grinds down against him, his body arched from the angle Daryl is keeping him in. He feels Rick’s length heavy against his stomach, hard and wild, and has to see it, has to drink it in like wine bubbling his blood into intoxication. His fingers go to Rick’s belt, deft and nimble, sliding the buckle out and then popping the button on his jeans. Rick groans words into his mouth, little promises, and Daryl swallows them down, basks in Rick above him like Rick is the sun and he is a new leaf blooming.

And then Rick is out, bobbing into the air and Daryl takes hold of him, strokes as he breaks the kiss to look, to stare at the pretty dark pink of Rick’s cock, straining already in want. Rick’s hands dip from Daryl’s hair, his nails digging little patterns into the back of Daryl’s neck. “Might embarrass myself,” he grumbles, panting and rocking his hips into Daryl’s hand.

Daryl scoffs. “Mean for you to,” he answers and then twists, pushes Rick and throws him down against the bed that creaks under the impact. Rick catches himself on his arms so his head doesn’t hit, but the air goes out of him, anyway, half from the motion, half from the twitch of his cock. It is taken back into his lungs, though, swallowed back inside when Daryl covers him, presses his body down like he can stamp Rick’s skin with the essence of himself.

“Don’t,” Rick groans, even as his body falls open for Daryl, settling him between Rick’s thighs, “don’t make me come. Jesus. I want to enjoy it.”

Daryl chuckles, then, and lifts his fingers, runs them lightly over Rick’s throat and then dips them to his chest, where two buttons on his shirt are already fallen open. Rick’s collarbone inside heaves for him, the outline of it against his skin striking and barbaric in the best possible way. Daryl reaches down to kiss it, sucks at a spot that calls to him like religion, and Rick’s body arches to Daryl’s touch, his back defining geometry.

“So many things I want to do to you,” Daryl whispers on his way from Rick’s collarbone to his ear. “So many fuckin’ _filthy_ things. Wanna smoke you like a cigarette,” he growls, his nails digging down Rick’s body, hitting buttons along the way and disfiguring them open. “Wanna drink you like I’m thirstin’ to death. Wanna fuck you till you can’t even scream anymore ‘cause I took all the air out of you.”

“ _Please_ ,” Rick hisses, his hips like a perpetual motion machine. “Goddamn, Daryl, _please_.”

Daryl flings the last button open on Rick’s shirt and grins down at his progress, splaying his fingers over the naked skin shivering at his touch. His thumb hits Rick’s nipple, runs over it roughly and he listens to Rick’s breathing gasp, revels in the joy permeating through the air. His palms run down, over the hard expanse of his chest, the rising and falling length of his belly. Daryl hooks his fingers into Rick’s pants, pulls until they fall around Rick’s ankles, pausing only to tear his boots from his feet and slide the rest of the clothes off of him. By now, Rick has sat up enough to shrug out of the unbuttoned shirt now tossed away in the corner and his hands are on Daryl like the grasping souls of hell. He tears, his fingers shaking, and Daryl loses article after article until he is just as naked as Rick is, just as hard and desperately quivering.

And then those hands, those beautiful hands, find their way to Daryl’s face again, cradling it and Rick comes in for a kiss that is a lot less hard abandon, but no less passionate, no less _real_. Daryl melts into it, his body coming down over Rick’s again, molding Rick to the bed with the curve of his body, the settling of his limbs against him, skin for skin. Rick’s leg moves, slides over Daryl’s body to hook around his waist and Rick rolls his hips upward, sliding his dick alongside Daryl’s stomach. Daryl groans into his mouth and reaches, grabs the Walgreens bag and dumps it over onto the bed.

“You sure it’s me?” he asks against Rick’s lips and when Rick nods, his eyes glue that holds the world together, Daryl’s fingers find the bottle and pop it open.

He pours lube onto his fingers, slicking them up and then reaches between them, sliding his hands below Rick’s thighs. Rick’s fingers find his bicep, cling in anticipation, and Daryl soothes him with a soft, hushing sound. “Tell me to stop and I’ll get off of you, quick as a light. And we can watch _Property Brothers_ or some shit.”

Rick laughs weakly and then swallows with a nod. “Okay. But I won’t. It’ll...it’s good?”

“It’s great,” Daryl tells him and then leans forward, kisses him to distract him as he slides the first finger in. Rick’s muscles resist at first, but then he relaxes, allows Daryl to play him open. Daryl keeps kissing him, slowly fucking his mouth apart, and listens to the little moans Rick hides deep in his chest. Daryl moves his finger in and out and when Rick is pliant under him, adds a second, scissors him open when he’s ready. Rick responds to him with a kind of instinct that could never be taught, something primal and _instinctive_ swirling between their bodies, building up within them to a tangled web of pressure.

“Fuck me,” Rick whispers, his lips swollen from Daryl’s notice and Daryl nods his agreement, fishes in the bag with his hand still slick from Rick’s body and finds the condom box, rips one open and slides it on with shaking hands. Below him, Rick’s chest rises and falls in skipped breaths, his mouth open and staring at Daryl between his thighs.

When Daryl is ready, he brings himself over Rick again, lifts Rick’s leg high to wrap around his back and puts himself right at Rick’s entrance. Rick is staring at him fully now and Daryl can see himself reflected in his eyes, knows with the deep down pit of his soul that Rick is seeing nothing but him now and that Daryl, likewise, knows nothing beyond this moment. He has a brief panic for the future--adrenaline shooting up and down his spine like an electric shock--that this might be _it_. This might be all he gets of Rick and once Rick has it, has held it fully in his hands and studied it to his heart’s content, he’ll let it go. Throw the fish back in the water and turn from it. Even though Daryl never _ever_ wants to be let go, even if it means suffocating on land, in Rick’s calloused palm that seems to spin for him.

“Stop thinking,” Rick whispers, his fingers so carefully caressing the skin of Daryl’s jaw. “Let it all go, okay? And take me. _Fuck_ me.”

And so Daryl does. Bows to Rick’s words faster and higher than any divine command. He slides in smooth and watches as Rick’s breath hitches, as Rick’s finger in his arm tightens and his pupils go wide. “Good?” Daryl asks, his voice barely a sound above the movement of their bodies.

“ _Perfect_ ,” Rick answers and brings his other leg up, hooks it around Daryl’s waist so Daryl is free to move in him, free to push forward until he is thoroughly in, Rick wrapped around him and clutching in so many ways.

Daryl begins to thrust, moving out and in shallowly at first, watching the little twitches of Rick’s face, the grunts and groans and gasps. Daryl takes time, _time_ as if they have it all within the world, to study him, to learn how Rick likes it, whether he wants it fast or slow, hard or soft, what angles make a cry rip from his throat. 

Rick writhes below him in ecstasy and Daryl reaches forward to take him in hand, stroke him to the rhythm of his dick sliding in and out of his body, but Rick slaps him away, tells Daryl feverishly that it’ll be over soon if he does that. So Daryl lets him be, lets him close his eyes and soak the feeling into his bones--a feeling Daryl knows all too well. The sense of being _complete_ for the first time in your life, of having someone in you and around you and holding you. If there was any doubt in Daryl’s mind that Rick would decide after he was done that he didn’t like dick, it’s gone now. Rick’s one of them, gay through and through, and the arch of his body to Daryl, the bend of his spine and the exposure of his throat as his head curves back, tells all there is to tell.

Daryl leans down, presses his lips to Rick’s Adam’s apple and speaks against it. “If you want to stay like this...I could finish in you.”

“Fuck…” Rick breathes, “yes.” But then, “No. _No_.” Rick pulls himself up and pushes until Daryl slides off, comes out of him and falls back into the cold air of the hotel, arched and ready.

Daryl blinks and begins to frown, but Rick’s little smile cuts him off. Rick sits up on his knees and bends himself over to Daryl, kisses him without reserve once more. “I want everything,” he tells Daryl. “The whole damn sampler. And now that I know how…” His eyes twinkle. “I want to slide myself inside of you.” He groans at his own words. “Feel how _tight_ a man can be.”

Daryl grunts at that, but kisses Rick in response, sliding his hand down to pull the condom from himself and toss it aside. “Touch me, then,” he tells Rick. “Get me ready and let me feel you.”

It’s Rick this time who flips Daryl, lays him down with his back to the bed, still warm from Rick’s body. He grabs the bottle discarded from Daryl’s hands and rolls it around in his palm before opening it again and squeezing lube onto his fingers. Daryl bites his lip at the sight of it and lifts his legs when Rick comes forward to study him. “Tell me, uh,” Rick says with a little hitch, “if I do it wrong.”

“Doubt you fucking could,” Daryl tells him and then reaches, grabs hold of Rick’s shoulder and pulls him closer. Rick falls into line between his legs, his body vaulted beautifully over him. Daryl grunts as his fingers find home, slip inside, and loses himself in the feel of Rick’s skin brushing his legs, his ass, his groin and then deep inside of him, working him, making him into something that he hasn’t been in quite some time. 

And then, just like that, he’s ready. And Rick, with a quick grab of a condom, is in position above him, arms and legs and chest locking in to Daryl like gears ticking away the time. “Don’t forget me,” Daryl whispers, unable to stop himself, “when you’re done.”

“Hey,” Rick whispers back, Daryl’s chin in his hand, forcing their eyes to meet in perfect alignment, “how could you think I would?”

He presses in, his body breaching Daryl, his cock sliding home. Daryl grunts, but it turns into a breathy moan and Rick smiles his victory before kissing him, fucking him slow and deep, the way summer comes or the turning of rivers from their birth course.

Daryl bends to him, his body rolling and snapping forward as Rick moves in and out. Rick immerses himself inside, goes so deep and so long that Daryl feels his balls pressed against his ass, feels the tip of Rick so thoroughly inside of him. But it isn’t that which causes Daryl’s skin to shiver, his eyes to blink, and his heart to flutter. It’s Rick’s eyes, so completely on him, unable to look away and, thus, unable to let Daryl go. He feels like an animal caught in a trap, a bird flitting about in a net without escape. But at the same time he feels...whole. Seen. Cared for. And that feeling, that blossoming light of _maybe it’s true_ that refuses to be snuffed out, causes Daryl’s mouth to fall open, his swollen lips parting and then forming the words, slow and with purpose despite the crashing nerves that are flooding his veins. “I think you could be my one,” he tells Rick as Rick buries himself so deep inside and Rick, without even a second of hesitation, smiles back, “You, too.”

They kiss. Daryl isn’t sure who starts it, is never sure who ends it, either. But he knows somehow they come together and the last little shreds of anything holding him back dissolve as that little light grows into a raging, roaring fire that catches everything in the room and turns it boiling hot. Rick speeds up inside of him, slams himself home and reaches between them to touch Daryl, to stroke his cock that’s so hard and damn near ready from being in Rick not minutes ago. It doesn’t take long, for either of them. But then, at the same time, it takes forever. It is, after all, more than the merging of two bodies. Daryl hopes, he can hope, he _will_ hope with every fiber in his being that he has _found it_. That this is the merger of _lives_ , of hearts and all that stupid bullshit he always said he didn’t care about it, but stupidly desired, the crap he has been _waiting_ for his whole fucking life like some goddamn queer.

“ _Please_ ,” he hears his voice say, and then, “ _now_ ,” and then, “ _yours_.” And Rick, Rick fucking _understands_. Because he twists his wrist just so and slams in just so and presses his lips to Daryl’s just so and they are coming together, arching with beautiful bodies and trembling touch and spilling between one another in ways higher and brighter than release, in something akin to paint mixing together to make art and Daryl _clings_ with everything in him, refuses to let go.

Which is good. Which is fine. Because Rick, for his part, is clinging, too. And once they are done, once they are spent, they don’t let go. How could they when the room spins, hums a tune low and rumbling and building, something as clear and high as faith, but as soft and harshly rough as love?


	15. Find a Note (And Ride a Little North)

Daryl wakes up alone, but with a loving scribbled note next to his head that reads, “Running some errands. Be back soon. XOXO -Rick.” He grunts and runs his hand over the space in the bed where Rick was, finds it cold from him being gone. The covers are still a mess--tangled and sweaty and to be real honest, come-stained. And beyond that, the room is rather untidy--clothes and boxes and bottles and bags scattered about. Daryl thinks of standing up and cleaning, but he decides fuck it. It’s a nice reminder of why his ass is sore, why Rick’s is probably even worse wherever he is.

Daryl does stand up, though, and goes back to his room, letting himself in and heading immediately to the shower, cleaning out the salt air and Rick’s sweat from his skin. He feels better when he steps out, lighter, like Rick fucked the pit in his stomach out of him, punctured the fluid in his lungs that kept him from breathing. Things seem goddamn _possible_ here in the light of the morning, not so stark and cold, packaged and branded as _never_ and _not for you_.

So Daryl finds that when he wanders out to find clean clothes in his bag, he’s _smiling_ for the first time in goddamn forever. He’s light on his toes, practically bouncing and Rick’s words echo in his brain. _Be back soon. XOXO. Be back soon. XOXO._ Real love? Daryl wonders. But no, that’s stupid. Not after one night of fucking, barely six days of knowing one another.

But still. A boy can dream. Rick’s probably out at breakfast, picking up Krispy Kreme or McDonalds or Burger King or some other godawful unhealthy shit that Daryl will suck down into his stomach without complaint. So Daryl will wait for him. Of course he will.

He grabs his pack and his lighter and retreats to the balcony, lights his first cigarette and savors it, slowly filling his lungs. When he gets done with that one, he decides fuck it, he’ll do another. And then, after that, he puts them away for awhile, but lays back in the smooth sun that ripples over his skin.

When he hits the two hour mark, he starts to worry. But Rick has other things to do, he’s sure. Exes to call. Maybe coffee to find. Maybe a phone left at the club last night. So Daryl gives him so leeway.

But then it’s three hours. Four. Five. Goddamn six. And Daryl’s smile slips off his face, the sun stops satisfying his skin, and his feet begin to twitch on the balcony wood, jittering up and down in nervous anxiety.

It doesn’t take long after his veins start filling with heavy dread for the statement to strike up again, quick like a match, and rattle around in his mind on high alert. _You’re a Dixon_ , it tells him, _fuck, you thought he was gonna_ STAY?

He begins a warring battle with himself, the logical part of him saying that Rick’s stuff is still here, that the note wasn’t just flippant, that Rick seemed to really enjoy himself last night, but the emotional, feverishly fragile side reminding him of who he is, what he is, what he’s not, and what he could never be.

His frown gets deeper as the sun starts to move from its high place overhead to curving slightly to the west. The light slips the possibilities from his eyes, the pit snaking its way back in like a seed blooming from a dead parent. The afternoon, in short, is not so kind and he has to suffer through it, has to grit and bear the disappointment and the unfathomably _expected_ nature of it all, that of course this would happen, that of course it couldn’t be.

It’s far into the afternoon, in fact, before any life is had on the balcony other than Daryl’s. And when Rick does slide out with a bang of the sticking door, Daryl finds that he can’t greet him with a smile or a caress, but only with the deep down cynicism of a grunt and a rather comfortingly familiar glare.

“Hey,” Rick says, as chipper as a bird, and sits down a messenger bag thrown over his shoulder onto the table on his side of the railing. “Sorry, took longer than I thought.”

“Why should I give a shit?” Daryl snaps and fishes for a cigarette, lights it for something to focus on other than Rick’s eyes bluer and wider than the sky. “Ain’t your keeper.”

“Uh…” Rick says with a frown on his face. “Thought you might be worried about me?”

Daryl grunts and stares at the cigarette, sucks it in and hollows his cheeks out. “Was just a fuck,” he tells Rick because it’s _easier_ to pull the bandaid off himself, easier to be the one that slices the knife through the air than have the knife slice him. At least this way he can say it was his _choice_. His _decision_.

But Rick, standing across the way and blinking at him rapidly, doesn’t seem to find it as relieving as Daryl thought he might. “Please,” Rick whispers, “don’t tell me I made the stupidest decision of my life.”

Daryl grunts and stares over at him. “What decision is that?”

Rick bites his lip and then swallows before stepping up to the balcony, his knuckles gripping it white-hard. “I...I quit my job. And I sold my car.”

The poison heavy in Daryl’s mouth falls away and he swallows back any biting response he could have said. He stares at Rick openly and then lets his lips fall apart as the world slows down into crystal clear focus. It takes him an embarrassingly long amount of time to say, “ _What? Why?_ ”

“Because…” Rick says, only a little squeaky, “I figured we didn’t need two cars where we were going.”

“Going…” Daryl breathes.

“North,” Rick tells him, ducking his eyes to the ground, but then flitting them up to stare at Daryl through his eyelashes. “I...it’s not a fantasy for you. You know? You want it. And I do, too. I want it really bad. For both of us. And I thought...I sold my car. So we’re not broke. And we’re going together. So we won’t be alone.”

Daryl drops the cigarette out of his hand straight into the ashtray, not even bothering to put it all the way out. He exhales sharply, the smoke evacuating his lungs until there’s nothing left in him but a burning need for air and release that is just two feet away, just an intake of breath and a step up to the railing between him and a whole entire world of _freedom_. But still. He can’t believe it. Still, he has to ask. “Carl?”

Rick shrugs. “Parents make long-distance work all the time. There are planes. We’ll work it out.”

“Your _job_?”

“Couldn’t stand it anyway. Not with those pricks.”

“Your _life_?”

“Right in front of me,” Rick whispers, his knuckles still gripping the railing, belying his calm exterior. “The best thing I can do for all of that...for my family, for my son, for _myself_ is to stop sacrificing what I want in this world for practical reasons that never live up to expectations. I was never going to be a society husband for Lori. I was never going to the perfect straight cop with the perfect marriage and the perfect son. And I don’t _want_ it. I’ve spent too long in my whole entire life taking things and pretending things I don’t want. But what I _do_ want is _you_. You and somewhere out there I don’t even know yet, somewhere way past Georgia and Mississippi. So let’s _go_. Daryl, let’s _go_. You and me. Right now. Don’t think about it, just...just tell me if you want me.”

“God,” Daryl scoffs and then drops his eyes to look around him--beer bottles still scattered from his weeks of residence, cigarette still burning in the tray, chair _bought_ for this hotel--and then with a wide, large sucking of air into mouth says, “that’s the easiest question I’ve ever had to answer.” He pauses and stares up at Rick--lean body, hard mouth, piercing eyes that will never let you go--“Yes.”

So Daryl stands. And walks toward him. Finds him and kisses him right there across that balcony, clinging with every little fiber of his body that sings high and loud and wide for a possibility that Daryl never thought he would ever experience. And when they have expended themselves in each other’s mouths, Rick grabs his bag full of money and they walk inside, through their separate rooms and gather their things, haul it up all in style.

Daryl slaps his sunglasses onto his head, ties up his bag and drags it out, the fucking thing feeling lighter than it’s ever been all the times he’s touched it since he left Georgia. Rick brings his messenger bag, his duffle, and they throw their key cards onto the counter, Glenn staring in awe at Daryl as he leaves.

Daryl leads Rick to his truck, opens the door for him and lets Rick slide in. He steps into the driver’s seat and turns on the ignition, looks around him at the Value Place he’s called his home for damn near too long. “We need a map?” he asks Rick, turning his head and smiling ever so shyly.

“Nah,” Rick says with a return grin followed by a lean over the cab, a kiss to Daryl’s mouth, soft and pliant and full of promises Daryl never thought he would hear. “We’ll just decide where we’re going when we hit the stateline.”

Daryl laughs, freely and without warrant, and, as he hits the gear on his truck and begins to pull out, he says with all the fever in his body, “Fuckin’-A.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I have purposefully not said where they are going and have not written an epilogue for this because I like the idea of possibilities! Since so much of Daryl's life has been caged, here I want him to be free--the whole wide world is before them! They can go anywhere! 
> 
> That being said, I'm curious what YOU think. What state did they end up in? What jobs do they have? What kind of house did they buy? Tell me what you think about their future! I want to hear all the different paths they could have taken!

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr Links:
> 
> [MAE's Rickyl Fics and Recs](http://maerickyl.tumblr.com/): Where you can find a list of my fanfic, fanfic recs, and snippets of works in progress.  
> [Michelle A. Emerlind](http://michelleaemerlind.tumblr.com/): My general tumblr where I put stuff? And things? And just whatever I want.  
> [Rickyl Writer's Group](http://rickylwritersgroup.tumblr.com/): The home of the Rickyl Writer's Group! Come join! We love new people!


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